SAILOR SF
by Sierraoscar154
Summary: Five young women find themselves in a series of escalating events, caused by factors they have no control over. From espionage and covert operations, to all out war between factions, there is no place that these Sailor scouts can find refuge or safety. OC, AU.
1. Prologue: In Medias Res

**Prologue: In Medias Res**

* * *

"_Have to trust someone to be betrayed." Captain Price, Modern Warfare 2._

Serena woke up from her ever so brief catnap. It had been a spectacularly bad day, full of running and fighting and destroying the youma that had ravaged the landscape around them. She didn't know how long she could hold them back. For hours, they had fought on. No support, no contact with the outside world, battling against ever-increasing odds. The worst part of it all, they had been abandoned.

Jupiter and Mars were hurt, but could still keep on fighting. Venus and Mercury ran from position to position, trying to help SAILOR Moon keep the seemingly unending waves of youma.

"Have you been able to contact anyone? Anyone at all?" SAILOR Moon asked Mercury.

"I haven't been able to talk to the fleet out there," she replied. "I'm sorry."

"Goddammit," Serena cursed. "We're stuck here, trapped and running low on food and water, not to mention everything else we need."

"And we were so naive," Venus said, scanning the horizon for the enemy. "I can't believe that we were so blind."

"We all were," Mercury said. "I just wish…I just wish none of this happened." Amy sighed at the predicament they had found themselves in. She was so angry at what had happened. Why them?

"Don't mention it." Mars had limped over from her position near a pond and brought over a canteen of brackish water. "It's our last full canteen. If we don't get support or something, we're going to…"

"I know, I know," Serena said. "Amy, did you try to get into contact with the fleet? Anybody friendly?"

"The youma have sealed off the entire area," she replied. "Nothing is getting in or out of this place."

"We have to keep moving, this position is not safe," Jupiter said. Her arm was in bad shape and she would be down to one good arm if she didn't get back to base soon. "We have to reach the sea, that's our only chance if we can contact someone…"

"Serena, they're coming," Venus reported. "At our twelve. I'm counting maybe three hundred. Maybe more." The huge dust trails from their movements clouded the horizon, an ominous signal of things to come.

"Okay, Amy, Venus, start packing up the stuff and get into the buggy over there," Serena ordered. "Raye and Lita will get into the…"

"More contacts!" Lita yelled out. "They're on the left."

"Oh Christ," Raye muttered. She crossed herself before realizing what she was doing. "All that Catholic schooling…"

"They're to our right!" Amy yelled.

There were now over one-thousand youma, readying themselves for an attack on five scared, young, and completely outclassed SAILOR scouts. Their survival prospects were very low at this point.

"What do you want us to do?" SAILOR Jupiter asked. "We can still make a break for it. Amy could signal those guys out at sea, and they could help…"

Serena looked out the barren landscape. Twenty kilometers to the sea. But it had taken them at least a good part of the day to cross twenty…and in their condition, they were in no shape to fight their way to the coast.

"We are so screwed."

"Oh, you're just now coming to that conclusion?" Raye snapped. "Thanks for pointing out the obvious. I came to that realization when were inside there."

"Can it, Raye," Mina said. "What do you want us to do, Serena? We'll follow you."

Serena looked at the huge dust trails that were kicked up by youma as they approached.

"I'm not going to die running," she said. "But at least some of us can make it. Mina, Amy, make a dash for the sea. Don't take the buggy, it'll make you a bigger target. Plus, it's not in good working order, after that last beating."

Mina and Amy stared at her in disbelief. "Serena, I'm not going to leave you," Mina said.

"Neither am I," Amy said as well.

"If we all die here, our story doesn't get told," Serena replied stoically. "You and Amy know the entire details of what went on here. Go. That's my final decision. Raye, Lita and I will hold as long as possible."

Without further protest, Mina and Amy started running toward the ocean as fast as they could.

SAILOR Moon, Mars and Jupiter turned and prepared to fight one last battle.

* * *

Author's foreword:

As of course, I do not own Sailor Moon, etc, etc.

I started work on this project in February of 2012, and finished it in July of 2012. I decided to start writing this simply because I wanted to (like anyone else in fan fiction!). Well, that and I had just finished watching Sailor Moon Abridged, and was brought back to memories of my childhood where Sailor Moon, like many other people, was the first taste of anime they had. I admit, I've been away from anime and manga for awhile now, and have only recently started to foray back into this; I feel this has been a good way for me to get back onto the scene.

As you can probably tell, the story is already complete, clocking in at about 325,000 words, so be prepared for a very long read. Only now I have decided to start posting due to reviewing, changing some things up, etc. I will be posting new chapters every day, so not to flood the readers with too much material. Also, some of the chapter names are truncated or shortened due to their length. The full chapter names are found in the story.

There are also alot of characters in the story, and to help keep track of all of them, they're posted on my profile.

Please enjoy this story, please leave reviews if you wish, and thanks!


	2. Prologue: Did you get that memo?

**Prologue: Did you get that memo?**

**0800hrs, 11 February 2013, Tokyo, Japan**

_"Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes…The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized." Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution._

* * *

It was a normal (well, as normal as politics can be for politics) day at the capitol of Japan. The prime minister's residence, called the Kantei, was humming with activity, even though it was relatively early in the morning. Staffers walked about with important papers for the Chief of Staff to see and sign off; the secretaries were writing their reports and the security detail was…well, they were standing there, doing their security thing.

The Diet, or the Japanese assembly had just began their session and already, it was looking to be a long one. There were some important bills coming up, especially regarding the Japanese Self Defense Force. Japan, by law, cannot have a "military", ever since WWII and that unpleasantness that was the atomic bomb. China was acting up however, and attitudes toward the JSDF were changing, especially in regards to external relations with other countries. Japan did not want to seem weak, with their economy lagging ever since the 1990's recession and with renewed pressure, both economically and militarily from many East Asian countries. In response, a memo, drafted from the Ministry of Defense and covertly slipped by courier to the Prime Minister's residence, suggesting a more, "direct" approach to the checkbook diplomacy that Japan had so faithfully followed in the years since WWII.

_"The Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force_ (SAILOR-SF) _will be responsible for the safety and continued wellbeing of Japan, responding to both domestic and external…"_

"Wait wait wait," Prime Minister Kenji Hasegawa said, looking up from the memo to his chief of staff. He was eating breakfast, some buttered toast and coffee but this had just spoiled his appetite. "Who the fuck wrote this thing? You know this is asking me to violate Article Nine."

Article Nine of the Japanese constitution was the big one; it was one that prevented Japan from having a military, _de jure_. Japan had been involved in some oversea missions, like sending "one" minesweeper to Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and a reconstruction battalion in 2004 to Iraq. There had also been some missions in the Indian Ocean, a mission to Afghanistan, and a base built in Djibouti to prevent piracy. But overall, people saw the JSDF as more of a humanitarian group, supposed to help people out in earthquakes and floods rather than to kill.

"I have no idea," the COS said uncomfortably. "I know that there are some within the Diet and the JSDF that want to expand the operational capacity of the Defense Force, but…"

"And who the hell came up with this acronym?" Hasegawa continued. "Were they trying to become as obtuse as possible?" The acronym was also written in katakana, awkwardly spelled as the Suitemateku Awuerinesu Enterijiensu Opurashunaru Rikon Sarubasu Fosu. He sipped some coffee, but now everything was bitter; he put the coffee cup back down.

"Sir, I don't know."

The PM sighed. _And this was going to be such a great day_, he thought to himself. He kept reading the memo.

_"…threats of a hostile nature. In conjunction with our allies _(read, the United States)_, SAILOR-SF will conduct operations within Japan and around the world to ensure the security of Japan and its interests."_

_Oh my god._ The PM said to himself. _This is going way off the deep end here._

He took off his reading glasses. "Get me the Minister of Defense and the COS for the Joint Chiefs."

By the tone of his voice, the PM's COS responded without question.

Thirty minutes later, MoD and COSJC were there, looking down with shame.

"Who...the…fuck…wrote…this…?!" The PM said this very, very, slowly and carefully.

"Sir," MoD began, but COSJC cut him off.

"I wrote it," he said.

The PM just looked at him.

"We all did," MoD continued.

"Who exactly, is we?" the PM asked.

"All the Joint Chiefs, the MoD, several division level commanders, a couple of captains from the MSDF, half the MPs in LDP and DPJ, well, when we asked them in a certain way…" the MoD answered.

The PM stared in silence. This was tantamount to a coup. Or that amounted to one in Japan for that matter.

"What were you people thinking?!"

"Sir, if we don't do something, Japan will fall as a nation from the international scene," COSJC said.

"Goddamnit, we fought and lost a war because of that," Hasegawa spat back. "I am NOT going to be the one that remilitarizes this nation."

"We are not going to remilitarize the nation," MoD replied.

"Then what is this memo all about then!"

"Sir," COSJC said. "What we are suggesting is a force that operates in secret, no larger than company strength and only a few actual operatives that respond to the most critical of threats in the world, especially to Japanese interests."

"And who would this force be accountable to?" the PM asked sarcastically. He knew the answer even before the MoD replied.

"To you, of course," MoD said matter-of-factly.

_Great,_ the PM thought again._ My own private army, doing my dirty work around the globe._

"Prime Minister, we need to do something. SAILOR-SF is the only way we can get around Article Nine."

_By going straight through it,_ the PM noted.

"Give me a minute," the PM said to them. "I'm not happy with you or anyone who was involved with this memo. But…"

MoD and COSJC hung on to that "But…"

The PM sighed. Japan was on the decline, no doubt. The once powerful economy was in the doldrums ever since the 1990s. China, Taiwan and South Korea were eating into the once powerful Japanese manufacturing and service industry, the building of military strength in said countries, and the aftermath of yet another recession…Japan could not take much more. The earthquake and tsunami hadn't helped either. Many youths were out of work, not to mention the rest of the population which was getting older all the time, xenophobia was still high, no immigration policy to speak of…

The weight of all these facts came down on the PM like an anvil. His nation could no longer stand back and look pretty. They had to do something. Anything.

This was not right. Then again, the things he had to do to get to the PM's spot were not right either.

"When can you start?"

"Sir?" MoD asked, confused.

"I said, when can you start?" the PM repeated.

"As soon as possible," COSJC said.

Hasegawa was about to make the biggest decision of his political career. If he went through with this, it would be a complete 180 from Japanese policy in the past. And it was all going to come crashing down.

"Alright then. Organize this…SAILOR group. Immediately. Do what you have to do."

"Yes sir." The MoD and COSJC bowed and left the office, the twin oak doors slamming behind them.

"Dammit." Hasegawa reached in his desk and pulled out a flask of whisky. The wife didn't care for him drinking, but right now, he needed it even if it was only the morning. In one pull, he finished half the flask.

"COS," he said into his intercom after finishing his pick-me-up. "What do you have for me today?"

"Sir, you have an appointment with the Minister of State for Postal Reform at 0900, a meeting with your cabinet secretaries at 1100, a lunch with…"

"Cancel everything before lunch and get my foreign policy advisors in here, ASAP."

"Sir, you've been putting off that meeting with Postal Reform…"

"Do it." The PM was not going to be trifled with today.

"Yes Prime minister."

The PM looked at that flask of whisky, but put it away. He needed to be at least sober for this.

_And just when things were starting to look up_, he thought.

* * *

Author's note:

I don't like putting notes down here, but some explanation on some of the acronyms:

COS means Chief of Staff. That means this guy is in charge of who sees the PM (Prime Minister), his schedule, his meetings, his workload...pretty much everything. One correction I have here is that it shouldn't be "Chief of Staff of the Joint Chiefs"; It should be Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff, or COSJS, not COSJC. My mistake.


	3. Chapter I: The Flame of Friendship

**Chapter I: The Flame of Friendship**

**0750hrs, 15 May 2013, Tokyo, Japan**

_"My friends are my "estate."" Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Serena Tsukino was not your average schoolgirl. She was in fact, below average, thank you very much. Her grades were not impressive, and she had a penchant for drifting off in class thinking of donuts or pizza or sticky buns. And she was late for school. Again.

"Dammit Mom, why didn't you get me up!" she yelled downstairs, putting on that (in)famous sera-fuku.

"I heard your alarm go off!" her mom responded.

"You know I don't get up at alarms!"

"Just hurry, okay? You're eighteen now, not in Junior High anymore."

Quickly throwing on her blouse, she hurried down the stairs and grabbed a quick breakfast of…

"Serena, you can't have those!" Mom yelled.

…doughnuts. These were the red-bean paste ones though.

"Sorry Mom, I'm in a rush!" Serena blitzed out of the house and made a dash toward the school, named Azabu Jūban High.

The Westminster chimes sounded the start of classes, just when Serena plopped into her seat for English to begin.

"Dammit," she said to herself. "Can't start eating those again."

"Say again?" Amy Mizuno, the more than nerdy, super smart student sitting in front of her mumbled. Her blue hair shimmered in the harshfluorescent lights, and despite attempts by the school administration, she had refused to dye her hair to fit in with the rest of the people there.

"What?" Serena sputtered out, trying not to think of doughnuts.

"Nothing, nothing." She quietly went back to staring at Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily".

The door to the class slammed open. Everyone stood up, as usual.

Unfortunately, the teacher that was usually taught English class was not there today. Instead, a substitute was in place. Her brown, wavy hair was mussed, clothes ill-fitting and she smelled of drink.

"Hello, I'm Yukari-sensei, yeah, get seated, whatever."

Yukari-sensei was not the best substitute teacher. She had gotten fired from her other teaching job after too many people complained.

"Okay, let me take attendance…" She ruffled through her satchel bag for thirty seconds. Everyone looked down to avoid the awkward situation.

Yukari finally got her shit together and called out attendance. After another thirty seconds looking for the English Literature book, she finally got on with the lesson.

"Can someone read the first paragraph of 'A Rose for Emily?'"

Silence.

"In English?"

More silence.

"Dammit, don't make me call out names!"

Very awkward silence.

Amy raised her hand, slowly.

"Ah…Mizuno!" Yukari looked down at the attendance roster to see if she was remotely right, and for once, she was. "Please, go ahead."

Amy stood up, looked nervously at the page, and began to read.

"Ouen Misu Emuri Gurieson daido, awah horu taon uento to hah funahraru: za men toru a soruto ofu resepekuru afuekushon foru ah farin monumento…" (When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument...)

It was really kind of pathetic to someone on the outside looking in. Even though Amy was super smart, English was a very difficult language (especially for the Japanese, where almost every sound ends in a vowel) and her skills were strained to read that first paragraph. She had been going to cram school, and despite the awkwardness of the pronunciation, she was doing quite well.

"Very Good!" Yukari said, in English. It really wasn't, but Amy was probably the best reader out of the entire class. "Can someone else read the next paragraph?"

Again, more silence.

"Okay then…ah…Tsukino?"

_Dammit_, Serena thought. "Me?" She said, trying to feign ignorance.

"Yes, you." Yukari was already getting bored. Chiyo-chan would have done so much better.

"Okay…" Serena stood up and picked up her book. The English words were just gibberish on the page; she didn't really know how to do English. Home Economics was her main strength but ever since the budget cuts, Home EC had been cut from the class schedule, replaced by a maths course.

"Eeto…uwasu….eh…biggu…su…su…(squarish)…furemu…" The sentence was, "It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires…" but Serena didn't even get that far.

"Yeah yeah yeah, that's enough." Yukari simply waved her off after a couple of failed attempts to read the sentence.

Bring bring bring.

The bell relieved everyone of the awkward situation.

"Okay that's it, bye bye!" Yukari was gone so fast that no one had time to stand up and bow.

"That was…strange," Amy said over lunch.

"I had her for English at my old school," Lita Kino said, shoveling down some rice. She was the new(est) transfer student. She was very tall for Japanese standards, and the school couldn't find a uniform that matched her height so they told her to wear her old one. That was two years ago, and everyone had given up on finding one that matched. The school had managed to get one but the shipment was lost in the 2011 tsunami, and they kind of just gave up after that.

"How was she?" Amy asked.

"She wasn't." Lita's curt reply ended that conversation. There was more silence as the girls shoveled down their respective lunches.

"Sooo…" Serena began.

"Yeah, what?" Lita replied in bored tone.

"Are you doing anything after school? Raye and Mina wanted to meet at the temple and then see a movie."

"Which movie?" Amy asked. She really wanted to see that new biopic on, of all people, Winston Churchill. She was actually going study for the entrance exams for college, but she had been doing that for the last couple of weeks and she needed a break. Everyone else had been studying…well, some more than others.

"I dunno, I think it's one of the Transformers movies," Serena replied.

"Are they still making those?" Lita was still bored.

"Yeah, they are."

"I'll go then," Amy said sadly. She still didn't have a lot of friends here, even after all this time at school.

"Sure." Lita's voice dropped a couple octaves.

"You okay there?" Serena asked absentmindedly. Lita was sure weird sometimes.

"I mean, um, yeah, sure." Lita's voice came back to normal. "I've been sick the last couple of days."

"Okay, then." Serena was thinking about the popcorn and the pop she would devour at the theatre.

After school had ended, they walked to the nearby Hikawa shrine where Raye worked.

"Hey guys, be right with you." Raye was helping two older ladies up to the shrine.

"That's really strange," Amy noted, yet again. Raye was completely calm, not like her usual fiery self.

"I think she's been doing some pot," Lita said.

"Oh come on," Serena rolled her eyes. "You've seen too many news reports." There had been a spat of investigative reports in the news about drugs and the increased use in Japan.

"Like, I can totally see Raye, like, doing that," a voice came behind them.

Everyone turned and glared at Mina. She was watching way too many episodes of _Clueless_ and _Gossip Girl._

"Sorry."

"Whatever." Serena noted that Mina could be even more ditzer than herself.

Raye came running back, changed out of her Miko dress and into street clothes.

"So, ready to see stuff blow up?" She asked excitedly. This was the Raye that everyone was used to.

"That's better," Amy said. "We were worried there for a moment."

"You know how it goes. I have to put on an act for the worshippers otherwise the temple goes kaput."

"Okay, let's do this!" Mina yelled and dashed down the street, toward the movie theater, with everyone in tow.

It was the last thing that they remembered of their old lives.

For a couple of days now, the locals had been complaining about an odd smell, like a very pungent odor of leeks or onions emanating from the sewer system. It had started when the public works company had come by, doing some "maintenance", but it seemed to start right after they left. The public works company came by several times again after a couple of calls, but they couldn't find anything. And the smell came and went, and it always never seemed to be around when the men in hard hats came. Most likely, everyone thought, it's a propane leak but they said it wasn't, maybe "sewer gas" or whatever the hell that was.

Well, it was.

A cigarette butt, tossed by a careless driver out the window forty seconds ago rolled toward one of the drainage slits in the road. It ignited the propane. In a span of a few microseconds, the flame travelled down to the sewer, and found the leaking reservoir from a nearby restaurant. For days, the gas had pooled in the sewer and with one spark, it caught flame. Another couple of microseconds passed. With nowhere to go, it expanded, taking the path of least resistance through the road and up into the air.

Boom.

Mina caught the explosion first. She was running past a bus station when the street exploded into fire. She the lucky one though. Most of the blast was absorbed by the metal and Plexiglas structure, but it was torn off its bolts and straight into Mina, pinning her to the ground, burning most of her blond hair and causing burns on ten percent of her body, but she was spared the horrors of what was to come.

Raye was next. Her body was tossed into a concrete wall, shattering her legs, lower back, pelvis, five ribs, breaking her right arm, fracturing the left. Three fingers on the left hand were obliterated immediately by flying debris. She suffered burns on thirty percent of her body, mostly on the back as she was turned away from the road yelling at Lita when the blast happened.

Lita's left arm was completely torn off at the shoulder by the blast, but was immediately cauterized by the intense heat saving her from a death from blood loss. Flying debris smashed into her ribs, fracturing several of them. Burns covered twenty percent of her body. She was thrown into Raye during the explosion.

Serena got the worst of it. Both her legs were ripped off at the knee, as were two fingers on the right hand, most every bone in her body was broken or damaged in some way shape or form, major head trauma, major disk fracture of the spine, major damage to internal organs, major damage to nervous system, major facial disfiguration, and burns on forty percent of her body.

Amy was last. The heat melted a cheap plastic water bottle by her side, spewing hot water and plastic onto her leg. There was some polyester clothing she was wearing that melted onto her skin. Sharp glass and debris disemboweled her, but she was far enough away that she only suffered minor burns on five percent of her body, mostly from the plastic and polyester. If holding your guts in your lap counted as a minor injury compared to everyone else.

Everyone was knocked out for a few seconds, and only for a few seconds because blacking out doesn't work that way. But everyone wished they had stayed out or had died. Mina was the first to wake up. She felt a burning sensation on her arms and head. Reaching to touch her hair, she realized that most of it had been burned away. _Dammit,_ she thought. _And I just got it done yesterday._ It was a weird thing to think, but then again, no one was thinking straight after this. Mina looked over at Raye. She was screaming something, her mouth moving back and forth but Mina was still deafened by the explosion so she couldn't hear her. Lita was sitting dumbly, holding what had been her left arm in her lap.

Mina then looked at Serena.

She was trying to stand up, trying to use legs that were no longer there, a spine that was too shattered to work properly. Serena was trying to say something but no words were coming out. She no longer looked like a girl, but a piece of charred flesh and bone that might have been overcooked at BBQ night. Further down the road, Amy was crying and screaming, trying to shovel her guts back into her body, blood everywhere.

Mina laid her head down. She wanted to die, it hurt so much.

She didn't get that chance.

In the ruined remains of the road, there lay something that would be easily missed by the cleanup crews and the police detectives. A melted lump of plastic that had once been a small, cheap kitchen timer attached to a mobile phone sat among the crushed asphalt. It merely appeared to be a stray item from one of the destroyed stores and would be thrown away when the rebuilding process would begin.

The six-man "maintenance" crew that had come by several times in the last week was anything but. One of workers punctured the exposed propane line and attached a mobile phone to the break. The kitchen timer was set for thirty seconds once the call came in from the other mobile. It would then ring, connecting a circuit of some simple wires that had been purchased for a couple yen. The resulting explosion would destroy most of the evidence. The maintenance worker wished he had some Semtex or C4, but that would leave a trace of foul play. Innocently enough, he turned on his gas sniffer, which detected nothing (because it had to be turned on outside to fresh air to be zeroed out) so he could tell the police when he came around that they had found nothing. The test holes they had also dug were at a pathetically shallow depth and their equipment would not detect anything. Satisfied with their work, they piled in their truck for lunch and then maybe after work, to a bar with the extra money they were being paid.

The careless driver, now a kilometer away, had been given a mobile along with a carton of cigarettes and told to drive near Hikawa shrine. At a certain time, he would be called park and to take a smoke for a while near the drainage slit then drive away when he finished. For this he was paid a cool 10000 yen and told to go on his merry way. He accepted, because he was out of a job and needed some quick cash to pay some gambling debts and it seemed pretty easy. He didn't know about the CCTV camera looking over the road, or the improvised bomb below him. He was just a distraction so the police would pin it on him for carelessly discarding lit cigarettes, and admonish the public for not following anti-littering laws. They would state that this was the natural consequence of antisocial behavior.

Five days later, the car with the man still inside it was found in Tokyo bay, just another tragic vehicle accident.


	4. Chapter II: First, Do no harm

**Chapter II: First, Do no harm.**

**1830hrs, 15 May 2015, Tokyo, Japan.**

_"I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God."_

_Modern Day translation of the Hippocratic Oath_

* * *

When the first panicked emergency calls went out to the first response units, the calls were also relayed to a nondescript building near the Ministry of Defense. Lieutenant Yumiko "Luna" (was her callsign) Kitsune of the Air Self Defense Force was stationed in that building, listening in on the frantic radio transmissions. What she heard stayed with her for the rest of her life. But she had also been told to call her commanding officer if a certain "situation" came up. This was that situation.

"What do you have for me?" her CO, Colonel Iwasaki said, briskly entering the windowless room where all the transmissions were delivered.

"Sir," Luna replied, taking off the huge headphones she used to listen to communications. "A massive explosion near Hikawa shrine has just occurred." She was doing all her best not to cry. "I have the emergency calls here." She put them on speaker.

_"Dispatch, this is Unit 64, we're at the scene of the explosion! It's a war zone down here!"_

"_Roger 64, are there any casualties?"_

_"Affirmative! Five causalities, all in their teens. It's…it's…"_

_"Calm down 64, Fire Brigade and Ambulance units are on the way, ETA, two minutes."_

_"Oh god…they're all burned…I've got one here holding her guts in her lap…Yamada! Get the First Aid kit from the squad car! Hurry! Those blankets too!"_

_"Affirmative 64. All units in the area, respond to an explosion at Hikawa shrine, extensive causalities and property damage. Cordon off the area and evacuate all citizens in the general vicinity."_

In the background, there was high pitched screaming coming from the wounded. Somebody was saying a prayer loudly, while others cried out in pain, for help, for their mommies, for somebody, anybody.

"Which hospital are they going to?" Iwasaki asked.

"Uh…" Luna flipped through her notes. "Senpo Hospital, near Takanawadai."

"Thank you, I'll take those." Iwasaki snapped the notes out of her hand and took off. "Return to your post," were his parting words.

Luna sank down into her chair, tears streaming from her eyes. What was going on? She thought to herself before putting on her headphones again.

* * *

It was chaos at Senpo Hospital.

Orderlies, nurses, and doctors ran about, treating the wounded. There were others besides the five girls caught in the explosion. So it wasn't a surprise when a platoon of JSDF soldiers marched into the hospital and commandeered the place.

"What are those guys doing here?" asked Dr. Tina Ruiz to a Japanese doctor. She was visiting from South Texas, where she was the residency director of family medicine for Corpus Christi Medical Center Hospital. As a doctor, she was obligated to help everyone that was hurt or needed medical care. Not that she would have refused anyway.

"Ah…they…they are…" the doctor responded in broken English. "They…they take over."

"Okay," Dr. Ruiz replied. It made sense to her. If such a thing had happened in Texas, the National Guard might be called out, but mostly civilian emergency personnel would take care of the problem. The NatGuard was only a last resort option anyway, and while she was a reservist, by law the military proper could not intervene in domestic affairs. Then again, this wasn't the United States. Ruiz turned back to treating a young child that had a piece of wood poking in her leg, tears streaming down her face as the good doctor pulled it out.

* * *

Colonel Iwasaki was asking for the five girls that had been brought in. They were the most wounded out of everyone that had been brought in. Despite the explosion, it had been mostly a ball of fire that had less impact on people in buildings, and shielded others from the debris. The five girls were out in the street and had borne the brunt of the explosion; they were being held in the ICU, undergoing treatment.

"I'm sorry Colonel," the lead doctor said. His nametag read "Koyama". "They are undergoing emergency treatment and we cannot let anyone in at the time."

"This is a matter of national importance," was his reply. "Let me through or I will be forced to shoot you."

Dr. Koyama was taken aback.

"National importance…? How do five wounded and now crippled girls constitute "'National importance?'"

"Maybe you should stop asking questions," Iwasaki snarled at him. "Let me through."

He saw the concern on Koyama's face. "We won't stop the operations, if it makes you feel any better."

Koyama glared back, but there wasn't anything he could do. He stepped aside and let the JSDF troops through.

"Damn," he muttered to himself. He rushed to the nearest landline and started making calls.

Colonel Iwasaki wouldn't let anyone in after that, no matter who needed to be treated or cared for in the ICU. They had to be sent elsewhere. They let Dr. Koyama back in for a status report every hour or so, but no more patients could be let in. The rest of the ICU staff did their work, desperately trying to save the lives of these five girls.

Finally, Koyama went out to one of the waiting rooms, hours later with the parents of the children. There was one family missing: Lita's family was not there, of course, due to them perishing in a plane crash some time ago.

"Doctor…" Ikuko Tsukino, Serena's mother was completely in shock. _How could this be happening…I scolded her for taking the doughnuts. I didn't even say I loved her…_

"The prognosis is…not good," Koyama replied, in complete understatement. "We are doing everything we can. But I'm afraid there's nothing much more I can tell…"

"How could this have happened?" Dr. Saeko Mizuno, Amy's mother asked. She had just come from a shift at another hospital, treating ironically, burn victims. The worst part of it all, she was a doctor herself but couldn't do anything to help. That wrenched her stomach. _She was taking a break from all that studying…now she might not even live to go to college._

Koyama simply shook his head. There was nothing to explain. Except for the JSDF troops, which the parents had not seen come in.

The doors leading to the ICU opened up. There was an audible gasp from the group of parents there.

It was just one of the ICU nurses.  
"Dr. Koyama," she said to him.

"Yes, what is it?"

She leaned over to him. "Iwasaki wants to see you."

"Alright." He turned and faced the crowd of parents. "I have to go back into the ICU. I'll try to get more news for you all."

He disappeared into the ICU with the nurse.

Instead of finding the patents there, he found only Iwasaki. His face looked grim and tired, just like Koyama's.

"I'm sorry to say…"

That was all that Koyama needed to hear.

"Not even one…?"

Iwasaki shook his head. "All of them."

"Where are the bodies then?"

"We are taking care of this now." The tone that Iwasaki was using made Dr. Koyama suspicious, but the death of all five of those girls now weighed on his mind.

"They will of course, be returned to the parents through this hospital, after autopsies are performed."

Koyama could only nod his head in reply. There were so many things not adding up, but there was simply nothing he could do about it. Mumbling a quiet "Yes," he walked toward those two doors that led to the waiting room.

The wails of the four mourning families could be heard throughout the entire hospital that night.


	5. Chapter III: Debts repaid

**Chapter III: Debts repaid.**

**1320hrs, 17 May 2013, Tokyo, Japan**

"_Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity." Ralph Waldo Emerson_

* * *

"What did you tell them?" The PM was standing at his desk again, wondering if that flask of whisky he had was empty yet. Ever since he approved the creation of SAILOR-SF, it had caused nothing but headaches. This was going to be the biggest one…so far.

"We didn't tell them anything." Colonel Iwasaki was there with the MoD and COSJC. "We simply stated that their injuries were extremely extensive and they could not be saved."

"And what about the bodies?"  
"Cremated, already. That's what we told them, anyway."

_Oh great. This keeps getting better and better._ "Why are we using five high school girls for our SAILOR project?" the PM asked very sarcastically. The ridiculousness of the situation was getting out of hand.

"Sir, if you refer to the third section of the memo we gave you…" MoD began. Hasegawa rustled around in his desk to find it. He put his glasses on and looked at the memo.

"_The best candidates for SAILOR-SF are persons ages 14-18, of both sexes, since they can be easily modified for…"_

The PM threw the memo down on the desk. He just didn't want to know any more.

"Oh god," he said to himself. "What have I done?"

"Sir?" Everyone in the room was looking at him.

"What exactly is going to happen to them now?" he asked COSJC. "And how long will that take?"

"Prime Minister, they will undergo treatment and therapy, along with mechanical modifications and augmentations so that they can achieve optimal combat performance. I estimate that it will take approximately three to six months to repair them, and then another year to…"

The PM waved him off. "Fine, fine…" he said in a tired voice. "Just…do what you have to do. That will be all gentlemen." _If I remain in office for another two years. Hope I still do._

They all bowed and left the room. His COS came back into the room after they left.

"Sir, some people from the business community are here to see you."

_The Keiretsu?_ _What do they want?_

"Um…sure, send them in."

The Keiretsu is a type of business group that has governed economic growth in Japan since WWII. It grew out of the ashes (sometimes, quite literally) of the dissolved "Zaibatsu", the closest thing that the Earth has seen resembling a "Mega-Corp," like Weyland-Yutani in _Alien._ A bank or trading company would control many different companies, ranging from food to computers (which is a horizontal method) or the entire supply chain, from producers, production and sales (which is a vertical method). Although the recession had weakened them, they still held sway although with less presence. It was still a good thing to have them on your side though.

Six men, smartly dressed in suits and ties, followed closely by six assistants. They bowed politely, and then one in front approached the PM, hand outstretched. Western customs still found their way in, somehow.

"Mr. Yamada," the PM said with a forced smile. He shook his hand. Ichigo Yamada was the CEO of the Nakanishi Group, one of Japan's most profitable conglomerates in an economy that was stagnant; his business had a profit every quarter, even in the aftermath of the tsunami in 2011. He was also a complete sleazebag, and that was saying something in comparison to most CEOs and politicians.

"Prime Minister," Yamada replied, the politeness equally forced. "Thank you for seeing us today." Not that the PM had a choice; they helped him get elected and had certain "privileges", one of which was dropping in on the PM whenever they felt like it.

"What brings you here today?" It was so difficult to retain the veneer of politeness, even for a Japanese man, around Yamada.

"We have heard about this…tragic incident near Hikawa Shrine." The only tragic thing to Yamada was a fiscal year with no profits. "We have also heard about your special project."

_Goddammit. _The PM was wondering when the news would break to the world and he would have to resign. At this rate, everyone and their mum would know about SAILOR-SF.

"What special project?" _Feigning ignorance might work._

"SAILOR-SF, of course."

_Or not._

"And your concern with it is…?" The PM wasn't even going to bother how they knew about it; for all he knew, they were the ones who came up with it. "I think you should dismiss your aides before we talk about this anymore."

Yamada just smiled. "Beryl here knows everything there needs to be known. So does everyone else."

His aesthetically pleasing assistant, Beryl, with long black hair, perfect nails and a slender body, seemed to float in midair as she approached the PM.

"Prime Minister." She seemed just as sleazy as Yamada. She bowed very slowly, exposing some cleavage as she did so. It could have been accidental, but knowing Yamada's taste in women, it probably wasn't…

"Miss Beryl." The PM gave another forced smile.

"So, anyway," Yamada continued. "We know all about SAILOR-SF, we know about the girls, and we would wish you to continue working on this project. At all cost."

"I am an elected official," the PM warily replied. "I can only do so much."

"We can…adjust your time here to suit."

That could work both ways, in terms of longevity or brevity. The PM hoped for the former.

"Fine. Is there anything else?"

Yamada simply shook his head. "No, Prime Minister. We just wanted you to be…aware of our support. Goodbye."

They bowed out, and left. Beryl gave one last glance at the PM, with a look that showed no life or emotion.

"Damn." The PM opened up his desk for the flask, but it was empty.

"Sir." It was his COS again. "Time for the funeral at Hikawa."

The PM did not answer immediately.

"Sir."

"I heard you, I'm coming."

As he left the official residence, the radio in the car was playing news broadcasts of the funeral that day.

"_Five girls perished two days ago in a massive explosion near Hikawa Shrine, including one of the miko there. Seventy other people were wounded in the explosion, and an official investigation in underway. The funeral is being conducted at the Hikawa Shrine, with the PM to give a personal appearance…"_

After the funeral at the Shrine, and meeting with the sobbing families for about an hour, the PM finally returned to his office.

"God," he said to himself (maybe). "That was horrible."

He could remember when the tsunami struck back in 2011, he was touring Japan on campaign and…

"Prime Minister," his COS interrupted. "A representative from the Nakanishi Group is here."

"Again?" he said, in disbelief. "I haven't even done anything yet. Show them in, please."

It was just one person though. _What was her name again…_

"Prime Minister," Beryl said to him, bowing and again, showing off that cleavage. No doubt now that it was deliberate.

"Weren't you just here this morning?" Hasegawa snubbed. He wasn't in the mood for politeness and manners today. Not after having been at that funeral, where he had to lie to four families.

"Oh, we're playing that game now, are we?" Beryl replied. "Fine, I have a further additional request."

"From your 'master'?" The PM was really, really getting tired of all these requests from the Nakanishi Group. But he still had to follow them because he owed them, big time.

"Oh no, not from Yamada. Not at all."

"From whom then? Get to the goddamn point already." Hasegawa was about five seconds away from tossing Beryl out of his office.

"From me."

The PM scoffed and went back to his desk. "I don't take orders from you. Yamada, yeah, but his PA? Give me a break. I'm not that much of an asskisser."

"Oh, you'll be doing this one, whether you like it or not," she said to him. The PM continued to ignore her. Beryl quickly walked up to him and slapped him in face.

"Ow!" The PM jerked back in surprise.

"Now you listen to me." Beryl was now treating the PM like a misbehaving child. "I carry just as much weight as Yamada, maybe even more so."

Hasegawa winced. He would have called in security but that might have compromised him even more so.

"What do you want?" he said in resignation.

"That's more like it." Beryl got a piece of paper out and handed it to the PM. "When you have this SAILOR force ready, I need you to start doing these tasks. Make sure that they get it right or else severe consequences might be involved for you."

The PM picked the paper up and looked at it.

"What do this have to do with national security?" the PM shot back, but Beryl raised her hand again. That shut him up.

"Prime Minister," Beryl smirked. "Nakanishi's security is Japan's security. You did know that, right?"

"Fine." The PM took the piece of paper and put it on his desk. He would have his COS file it away until needed.

"I'm glad we're on the same page," Beryl said. "See you around. Prime Minister."

She waltzed out of the room, cocky as ever.

"God, I hate my life," the PM griped as she shut the doors behind her.

He reached for that flask again, but remembered it was empty.

"Fuck. Why do I keep doing that?"

It didn't take long for his COS to interrupt him with the day's meetings, and soon afterward, the Prime Minister was hard at work again, running Japan.


	6. Chapter IV: Okaasan kara no tegami

**Chapter IV: Okaa-san kara no tegami**

**0625hrs, 23 May 2013, Somewhere in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan**

_"Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children." William Makepeace Thackeray_

_"Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open." B.K.S. Iyengar._

* * *

Serena gasped for air. Everything was so bright. So white. So clean. It seemed like there was no color to this place, and that if there were, it would immediately get sucked up by the whiteness of everything.

_Where am I?_ she thought. The last thing she remembered was fire and not being able to walk.

She tried to get up. Her body would not respond. She began to panic.

_What's going on?!_ _I want mom…dad…even my idiot brother…_

She could at least wiggle her finger on her right hand. _Wait…finger…?_

Painfully, she turned her head and looked at her right hand. There were two missing, and she couldn't move her thumb or index finger as they were immobilized. She could still give the bird though, that was always important. She couldn't move her arm because it was strapped down to the bed.

_Oh no, what else am I missing?_

Left hand. All fingers in place but immobilized.

_Can I at least move my legs?_

She tried again. No response.

_Crap._

Tears were streaming from her eyes now, but they hurt like hell.

_I want to go home…I want to go home…I want to go home…_

A door in front of her opened.

"She's awake."

Two doctors and a nurse walked into the room. The nurse checked the IV fluid going into Serena's arm while the doctors examined Serena's "progress".

"How are you doing?" one of them asked. Serena could barely make out the name "Kawasaki" on his name tag.

She tried to respond. Her lips moved, but no words came out.

_Why can't I speak?!_

Again, lips moved. No words.

_Speak Dammit!_ _Come on Serena, fucking speak!_

"Gahhhhhhhhh," was the first sound. Not the one that Serena was hoping for.

"Very good," the other doctor said, as if it meant anything to her.

They spent the next ten minutes or so doing some more tests. Poking. Prodding. Everything they did hurt.

Serena cried and cried. She couldn't do anything.

"I'm sorry," the nurse said to her. "We have to roll you over. This will hurt a lot."

Again, Serena couldn't do anything but painfully nod her head.

After removing the restraints, they rolled her over. She mouth opened to scream in pain but nothing was coming out, as usual.

In thirty minutes, it was all over. After another painful roll-over, they left and she was alone again.

* * *

"Poor girl," the nurse said. They were in an observation room with a big one way mirror, looking at Serena try to move in vain, mouth opening and closing but nothing coming out. The other patients were on video camera in the room, asleep or just now starting to wake up.

"That's just the beginning," Kawasaki said. "It will get a lot worse once the reconstruction process begins. What do you think Kobayashi?"

Kawasaki was in his mid-thirties, a very excitable doctor with much intellect, but not a lot of experience. He had been recruited right out of his residency for this project; he showed much talent and a very good grasp of what was wrong with someone if they came to be treated by his hand.

The other doctor, Kobayashi, simply stared at Serena.

"Kobayashi?"

"Mmm?"

"I asked what do you think?"

There was more silence.

"Well…" Kobayashi began. "With the robotic replacement limbs, the healing/repair solution we have available, and extensive plastic surgery, we can completely make her good as new. Better even."

Kobayashi was an older gentleman, with grey hair and spectacles, with years of experience and prestige on his belt before the government recruited him for this project.

"But…" the nurse chimed in.

"Nurse Kuroi," Kawasaki hissed. "Please don't…"

Kobayashi held up his hand. "Nurse Kuroi is right. 'But' is the sentiment that I have. I do not know what will happen with Miss Serena here mentally. She can be the strongest woman in the world but her mind is still in shock. That is something we cannot fix. Even my expertise as a brain surgeon cannot help the mental state."

Beep beep beep. A light in the room flashed. Another patient needed some help.

"I'll get it," Nurse Kuroi said.

She left the observation room and headed down a long, brightly lit hall. There were five patient care rooms, 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, and 1F. 1E was the observation room that Kuroi had just come out of, and Serena was in room 1F. The patient in question was in 1B.

* * *

Amy was waking up from all the drugs they gave her. She was one of the least wounded, next to Mina, and had to be kept sedated in order to preserve secrecy. Now that they were in a top secret medical facility (located in Miyagi Prefecture, at Mt Izumigatake, Furusato Midori-no-michi, just up the road from that ski resort or skating rink…something like that), they could be woken up for the real treatment.

"Ugg…" she moaned as Kuroi entered the room.

"Hello," Kuroi said politely, checking the IV and vitals.

"Where…where am I?" Amy tried to get up. She wasn't restrained as she had been deemed less of a risk patient, unlike Serena or Raye (and they couldn't move anyway).

"Please, lie down." Kuroi was super polite and gently pushed Amy back down into the bed.

"I…I…"

"It's going to be alright. You're safe now."

Amy nodded slowly. "Where are my parents?"

Kuroi had prepared for this moment for awhile now, but it was still hard to speak the scripted message to Amy.

"I'm very sorry Amy. Your parents cannot see you."

"Why…?" The brain in Amy's head was running in a sprint now. This wasn't any normal hospital. A quick glance of the room revealed instead of a (somewhat) cozy hospital room, with a TV, chairs, bathroom, windows, or anything else, there was nothing at all. White walls with padding on the sides, bright white light from the in fluorescent lights the ceiling, one window in the door and no sharp objects in the room, with everything bolted to floor. "Why…?"

"Amy, I'm sorry, but you're in the care of the state."

"Care of the state?" It took a couple of seconds for that to sink in. "What…?"

That was the kicker.

"What are you talking about?!" Amy said, panic rising in her voice. "I want to see my mother!" Amy tried to get out of the bed again. Kuroi let her sit up at least before stopping her.

"Please," Kuroi said. "You're smart. You wanted to become a doctor, like your mother right?"  
"I…"

"Don't you?"

The answer of course, was yes, but not like this.

"You can help your mother. You can serve your nation. You can be a hero." Nurse Kuroi repeated each of the pre-scripted line carefully and with conviction. "You want to be a hero, right?"

Amy looked down. She didn't know what to think. She saw the bandage on her stomach, where her guts had splayed out.

"Think of it like college. You were planning to go to college, right?"

Amy looked back up. "Like college?"

"Yes, what you're going to do will be the equivalent of an education from Todai."

_Todai?_ That was her dream. _Make mom proud. Todai. Doctor. Respect._

"But again, you are a ward of the state."

"Can't I write to her? Call her? Send an email? An SMS?"

Kuroi shook her head. "Amy, this program requires the upmost secrecy and discipline. You might put your mom at risk by contacting them. And you can't make your mom proud if she's dead."

"But…but…" Amy sputtered at Kuroi's logic. It wasn't adding up.

Kuroi looked around, then came up and whispered into Amy's ear.

"I'm not supposed to show you this," (she was), "but this is a waiver signed by your mom after the accident."

She pulled out a piece of paper with Saeko Mizuno's name seal stamped on it. It was actually for the cremation of the body that was supposedly her daughter, but the tech guys lifted the seal and put it on a waiver that released her to the state for reasons "that would benefit the country in case of severe injury or disability." Even though Amy and the rest of the girls were legally adults, in certain situations the state would come in and take over in case of emergencies.

It was complete bullshit, as usual.

But that was all it took to convince Amy.

"Mom…" she moaned, looking at the paper. "I…guess you had your reasons. You're a doctor. You understand. Unlike dad. Not like him at all." She cried a little bit, but she understood. Mom knew best. "I'll make you proud mom."

Kuroi tugged the paper away from her. "I'm sorry. But now you understand. Please try to get some rest now. You'll need it to recover."

Amy laid back down in the bed, sad, but relieved. This terrible event that had happened might have a silver lining at all. She fell back asleep.

* * *

Kuroi walked out of the room, taking one last look at Amy. She sighed, knowing it was all just a lie.


	7. Chapter V: Food, for the Soul

**Chapter V: Food, for the Soul.**

**0830hrs, 30 May 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"How can I describe it? Good food is like music you can taste, color you can smell. There is excellence all around you. You need only to be aware to stop and savor it." Chef Auguste Gusteau, Ratatouille_

* * *

"Hello Mina." Nurse Kuroi brought in breakfast for the young girl. She looked so helpless, especially after since they told her the separation of her and her family. Mina often stroked her semi-bald head now, although hair was growing back fast. She looked blankly at the popular culture magazines she had asked for.

"Hi Kuroi-sensei," Mina said weakly.

"You can just call me Kuroi." They needed informality to win the girls' trust. "Here's some breakfast for you." She set a breakfast tray on the bed.

Mina looked at it. Green tea, rice, miso soup, tamagoyaki, and some salted salmon, with umeboshi on the side. It all smelled so good, and it looked even better sitting there on that tray.

Her stomach grumbled for food. She reached for the chopsticks on the side.

"Itadakimasu," she mumbled. Her bandaged hands trembled as she picked up a piece of salmon.

"Here," Kuroi said. She steadied Mina's hands and brought the salmon to her mouth. It was enough for Mina to take a bite and enjoy it.

"You got it?" Kuroi asked.

"Yeah…" Mina's hands had stopped trembling. She picked up the cup of tea and drank some.

"I'll leave you to your breakfast. Call me if you need anything."

Mina simply nodded. She waited for Kuroi to leave, then piled into food, savoring every bite that she took.

* * *

"And how are you doing Amy?"

Amy was doing much better than everyone else. In better spirits, while a bit sad at times, she had quickly adjusted to her surroundings. She had prodded for more information about the reasons for being here, but all that Kuroi could give was that they would receive more information once they had healed more.

"I'm doing fine, Nurse Kuroi. What's for breakfast today?"

"The usual." She put the tray down in front of Amy.

Looking at the meal, Amy seemed a bit disappointed by it.

"Can't we have a western style breakfast? We've had the same meal now for a week."

"Later," Kuroi stated. "The doctors want to keep tabs on your digestive tract and don't want to have anything too rich going down."

Amy sighed. Of course, having the guts on the outside of your body wasn't conductive to good digestion.

"I understand. Thanks Nurse Kuroi." She picked up the chopsticks and began eating.

"You're welcome." She turned to leave, but then thought of something.

"Amy…"

She looked up from eating. "Yeah?"

"Think you can go for a stroll?"

Amy thought about it for a minute. "I've been getting around pretty good in this room. Why?"

Kuroi sighed. "Well, it's Mina. She's really down, and I think she needs someone to cheer her up."

"I wasn't really friends with Mina," Amy replied. "She was more toward Serena than I was."

"But you know her. And well, let's put it this way, the other girls are not in any shape to help Mina."

Amy sighed. "What do the doctors think?"

"I put it past them yesterday. They think you and her are ready for some light physical activity."

Another moment of pondering. "Okay…" Amy said. "I'll do it."

"Good." Kuroi smiled.

* * *

In the afternoon, with some help from a couple of orderlies and Nurse Kuroi, Amy and Mina walked out to a tea garden in the middle of the medical facility.

They sat on a bench near a bubbling spring, watching the koi fish swim aimlessly around.

"Soo…" Amy said to Mina.

Mina just kept staring.

"You okay?"

No answer.

"Look…"

"I'm not okay!" Mina shrieked.

Amy was taken aback a bit, but regained her composure. "They just want me to help you out."

"Help? Help?!" Mina stood up quickly, but lost her balance and fell back onto the bench.

"Fuck me, I'm a mess. I can't…I can't…" She started sobbing. "Can't see my mom or dad. Can't see my other friends. Don't have any hair. Can't take my college exam. I have to wear these bandages all the time. I can barely walk…" She trailed off, looking at the koi.

Amy looked at her for awhile, then spoke to her again.

"You know, Mina," she began. "When I was younger, my dad…my dad left me and my mom."

Mina looked at her.

"He did what?"

"He…left us. He was an artist, and a good one too, but he just wasn't a good dad. One day he got up and went to live in a cabin in a forest. And you know what? The only way I know him now is from the postcards he sends on my fucking birthday."

Mina was quiet for a little bit. "That…that blows."

"Yeah, it sucks. But I turned out okay. And we can get through this."

For the first time in weeks, Mina gave a little smile.

"You think so?"

"I know so. Life will go on."

More silence. "Thanks Amy," Mina said after a little bit.

"No problem," Amy replied. "Say, I'm kind of hungry…"

Mina giggled. "Me too. Let's get something to eat."

* * *

Lita struggled to lift the fork to her mouth. She had asked to eat with one after chopsticks proved to be difficult. Not having a left arm kind of made everything harder.

She dropped the fork. Again. Rice spilled everywhere.

"Crap."

Knock knock knock.

Someone was at the door. No one came to the door except for the nurses.

"Who…who is it?"

"It's us!"

"Who the fuck is us?!" Lita yelled in frustration.

"Mina and Amy."

_Oops, _Lita thought. "Well, come on in then."

The door opened, and Mina and Amy walked in, followed by two orderlies carrying their tray of food. They had gotten the go-ahead to have supper with Lita.

"Hi there," Mina said bubbly. She was in a much better mood.

"Hey." Lita was surprised. Last time she saw Mina, she had a full head of blond flowing hair. Now it was mostly gone. Of course, last time Mina and Amy saw Lita, she had a left arm.

"I'll help you there," Amy said, seeing the dropped fork.

"I can get that Ma'am," one of the orderlies said.

"Oh…okay."

The orderly picked the fork and gave it to Lita.

"Thanks."

The orderly nodded and left with the other one.

Lita started to struggle with the fork again, slowly scooping up the rice and trying to lift it to her mouth.

"Let me help you," Mina said. She guided Lita's hand to her mouth.

"Say 'ah'", Mina chirped, as if she was talking to a baby.

"Ahhhh." Lita swallowed the food whole. So good.

"How are you coming along?" Amy asked, picking up some sashimi and dipping it in soy sauce.

"Besides not having a left arm? Peachy," Lita snarled. She immediately regretted it. "I…"

Amy looked a little bit hurt, but it wasn't the first time someone had snapped at her today.

"I'm sorry," Lita replied. "We're all hurting here."

There was a brief moment of silence while everyone chowed down on food.

"Have you seen Raye or Serena?" Lita asked. She hadn't been out much as they wanted the stump on her shoulder to heal.

Mina shook her head. "They won't let us seem them, for now. It's really bad though. I remember…"

She stopped.

"No, it's okay," Amy said. "Please…"

Mina continued. "I remember Serena that day. She didn't have any legs at all, and she was burned all over."

"Shit." Lita said. "What about Raye? I don't remember anything after running out into the road."

"She was saying something, but I couldn't hear her because I was deafened at the time."

Everyone remained silent after awhile after that. Healing was going to be a difficult process, and they knew it.

"I heard there's a school for people like us," Amy said after awhile. Lita looked embarrassed at that; Amy and Mina were the least wounded out of the entire group and were doing just fine. They didn't have to put up with dealing with a missing arm, or legs, or burns all over their bodies. But Lita realized that Amy was just trying to cheer them up, in her own intellectual sort of way.

"Yeah, it's up in Sendai somewhere," Lita replied, almost dropping her fork again. "Of course, there's also a school where they use holographs and battle each other over classrooms." That had gotten quite a stir in the media in the last couple of years.

"I wonder, after all of this over," Mina wondered out loud, ignoring Lita's previous comment. "That we'll complete our education there."

"Not you two," Lita groaned. "Maybe me, Serena and Raye."

"We'll come and see you," Amy reassured, picking up another piece of tuna.

"Maybe you'll meet some nice guys," Mina smiled. "Perhaps get some action in too, hmm? Hmm?"

She winked at Lita. Lita rolled her eyes at that statement.

"Hey, we haven't been condemned yet," Lita retorted, sticking her tongue out at Mina. "Plus, you have plenty of experience in those matters. Perhaps you could teach me some of your ways."

Mina, blushed, not out of embarrassment but out of remembering those fondling…er, fond memories very well.

"I will be more than happy too, mistress." Mina put her dinner down and leaned in close to Lita.

"That's enough you two," Amy interrupted, laughing at Lita's unconfortableness.

Mina leaned back, smiling at Lita.  
"You're so weird sometimes," Lita said, finishing up her meal.

"I know," Mina replied. She looked at a clock up on the ceiling, protected by a wire mesh cage to prevent destruction by unruly patients. "It's about time for me and Amy to get going."

"Thanks for eating with me," Lita said to Amy and Mina.

"It was our pleasure," Amy replied, smiling faintly.

"No problem," Mina chirped up. "We can do this more often now, I asked the Nurse about it, and we can eat together whenever we want!"

Everyone in the room was smiling now, something that hadn't happened nearly as frequently during their stay at the medical facility. Amy and Mina left, letting Nurse Kuroi come into the room and give Lita her checkup. Lita, instead of being grumpy about it, allowed Kuroi to perform her exam without any complaint. Things were at least, looking up for the time being.

Well, for most people anyway.


	8. Chapter VI: A Raye of Hope

**Chapter VI: A Raye of Hope**

**1640hrs, 31 May 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"While there's life there's hope, and only the dead have none." Theocritus._

* * *

"GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Raye was in pain.

"I'm sorry, we have to put this cream on to help heal your back." Nurse Kuroi was putting on an antibiotic solution on her back in order for the burns to heal. Even two weeks after the explosion, they needed more time to heal and to be treated.

"Dammit," she hissed to herself.

Raye had been laying on the front of her body for the last two weeks because of the burns, unable to do much of anything because her arms were broken, her legs broken, pelvis broken in addition to a lot of other things. Going to the bathroom was not a pleasant sight.

She didn't take the news of her family giving her up very well either. Raye actively resisted medical treatment, trashing painfully about to avoid being treated, but the pain was too much and she settled back into a resentful quietness.

* * *

"What do you think of this one, Kobayashi?" Kawasaki and Kobayashi were sitting in the medical facility cafeteria. They were talking about Raye, of course.

"Painful for now, but in the long term, she'll make a recovery. We can speed up the healing process once we get that special solution in." Kobayashi took a bite out of his sandwich.

"When did you order that?"

"About a month ago, they wanted to conduct more 'tests' on it."

Kawasaki rolled his eyes. "We all know what it does."

"Increased healing time by 1000%? Removal of scarred tissue? Repair of internal organs? Yes, it does all that. But the Nakanishi Group wants to get ahold of it." Kobayashi, usually composed, sneered when he said "Nakanishi Group."

"And there's only a few liters of it," Kawasaki said. "It's so expensive to make though. Maybe if the Nakanishi Group helped to improve the manufacturing process…"

Kobayashi shook his head. "Nope, that greedy bastard Yamada sees yen signs. And since he helped the PM get into office, no doubt that it's already made its way to them."

Kawasaki shrugged. "I don't have much a problem with them."

An audible sigh came from across the table. "You'll see soon enough," was the reply.

Kawasaki tried to shift the topic onto something else that pertained to the project.

"How much?"

"How much what?" Kobayashi replied.

"How much does this project cost?"

"Per person modified?" Kobayashi did some quick calculations in his head. "About 480,000,000 yen."

Kawasaki whistled. "Damn. That's a lot."

"Quite." Kobayashi went back to eating.

Kawasaki changed the subject after they ate in silence for a while.

"Have you memorized the script?"

"Yeah, I have."

"Why are we asking them? They're already here and they can't go anywhere. So why ask for their permission?"

"We could torture them, yes. Break their minds, their bodies, their heart and souls, strip the humanity out of them, build them back up like robots," Kobayashi said. "But if we give them a sense of purpose, a sense of duty, of commitment at this point in their lives, we can win them over. We've taken all that they know from them already, and they are completely dependent on us. It will just take a little bit more prodding and ego stroking, then the real work can begin. And plus, any physical torture might send them over the edge, and they would become just broken shells, with no hope or spirit. They would be no use to us then."

"It's just so weird," Kawasaki replied, poking at some rice.

"I know." Kobayashi looked at him. "But it's something we have to do."

Kawasaki continued to play with his meal, until Kobayashi spoke up again.

"You know, there's a program like this already."

"Yeah, that one in Italy?"

"That's the one. I heard it wasn't as successful as they wanted to be. Too many dead bodies, and they kind of didn't get anywhere with the Republican faction or whatever they're called."

"We can do better then," Kawasaki said confidently.

"I hope so," was the reply.

* * *

Raye lay there, staring at the wall.

_I can't take much more of this, _she thought. _I gotta get out of here._

But she couldn't. Trapped.

She looked at the video camera on the wall, focused on her.

"Fuck you!" she yelled. "Ow, that hurt."

_I wonder what everyone else is up to._

The door opened suddenly.

_Great, the fucking nurse again._ "What the fuck do you want?"

"Raye, it's Lita."

"Oh."

She couldn't really turn her head to look, but Lita came over to her and kneeled down to eye level.

"Hey."

"Hi."

They stared at each other for a minute or so. Lita was looking at Raye's body. Her back was completely covered in bandages, and she look like she was in pain most of the time. Lita couldn't help but feel sorry for her….She was suffering, like herself. Like everyone else.

Then Raye broke the silence.

"I'm sorry about your arm."

"Don't mention it."

More silence. Raye didn't feel like talking to Lita. She was always this tomboyish person that got along with the rest of her friends, but Raye was different. She was cool, the alpha girl, the shit. And now…

"I really want to leave."

"We can't."

Raye continued to stare at Lita. _This is going to be the most awkward, and shortest conversation in my life if this keeps up,_ Lita thought. _I have to help her in any way I can._

"I need to help grandpa."

"We can't leave Raye. You know that."

"Fuck that, first chance I get, I'm busting out of this joint."

"Then what?"

"I'll call my dad." She thought about that for a second. Her dad had fallen so far from power as the leader of the DPJ that he was reduced to living in a small apartment after that scandal had broken out about him and his secretary, Kaidou. It had to do with a large cucumber, a bottle of whisky, ten rolls of duct tape and a pot full of ramen noodles, but no one could really figure out the details behind that.

"Okay, maybe not."

"See?"

Lita took her right hand (well, her only hand now) and squeezed Raye's.

"Please Raye. I don't know why they're keeping us here, but it's really important. If they went to all this trouble to keep us here, to treat our injuries, to do all stuff, then I guess we're important in some way, shape, or form."

Raye pulled her hand back. "Don't believe them for a second."

"Raye…"

"Go away."

Lita sighed. She took Raye's hand again, squeezed it, then left.

As the door closed behind her, Raye looked at the hand that had held Lita's only remaining hand.

_Shit. She's fucking right. I'm being a complete ass._

"Gramps…" she said to herself. "I'm sorry."

She thought back to a conversation with her dad some time ago. When he was a powerful man, and he was going to be one of prime ministerial candidates.

"Raye," he said over a plate of curry at one of the fancy restaurants that he liked to go to. "How is school going?"

"School is going fine, dad." It wasn't, of course. Raye hated going to that Catholic School.

"Well, that's good to hear. And the temple?"

"The temple is fine, dad. Grandpa says hi." Grandpa of course, didn't, but she had to say something.

There was a slight pause as Raye's dad took another sip of umeshu.

"Very good then. Listen, I have something very important to tell you."

Raye put down her chopsticks. "What is it, dad?"

"I'm going to run for Prime Minister."

Raye scoffed. Of course he would. "That's great dad," she replied, contempt in her voice oozing out with every word.

"Oh, don't be that way," her dad chided. "This will be great. Daughter of the most powerful man in all of Japan. Think of the opportunities. You could be somebody!"

"Dad, I want to be the head priestess at Hikawa Shrine. You know that."

"Dammit Raye, I didn't raise you to be some Shrine maiden at that temple!" He was becoming more and more impolite with each glass of umeshu he took. That bothered Raye a lot. And the fact he slept with more women that she could count…but Kaidou was the special one. They fucked each other a lot, and Raye knew that. She heard them sometimes when she stayed over at his house on occasion.

"You know what dad, fuck you!" Raye threw down her napkin and got up from the chair. The people in restaurant knew better to look up and interrupt the argument between one of the most powerful men in the country and his daughter. "I really don't care if you run for President of the world! You never raised me! Grandpa raised me, and you fucking know that! So, why don't you go bang your secretary and have a nice term as the PM, okay? Just leave me the fuck out of it!"

She got up and left the restaurant. That was the last time she talked with her dad. Shortly thereafter, the scandal hit, and that Hasegawa person took over.

Raye lay there, tears rolling down her eyes, angry at herself, angry at dad, angry at mom for dying, angry at grandpa for hitting on some of patrons sometimes…there was so much sadness rolled into the anger.

The door opened. This time, it was the nurse.

"Time to change the bandages," Kuroi said. "Please don't struggle, like you did last time."

Raye obeyed this time, much to Nurse Kuroi's surprise. "Well, this should help the healing process. I'll have some dinner brought in and we'll feed it to you. Sound good?"

Raye nodded.

Kuroi left the room, and wondered what Lita had said to Raye that made her calm down so much.

"I talked to Raye today," Lita said to Mina. They were eating dinner, again, but now in Mina's room.

"How is she doing?" Mina replied, stuffing some ume in her mouth.

"She's still mad, but she'll get over it."

"If I were Raye, I would be too," Amy said quietly. She thought of her own mother, left behind.

"Well, here's to our family." Amy raised her teacup in the air. She immediately realized her mistake and looked at Lita apologetically.

"Don't worry about it Amy," she said with a smile. "Hear hear," Lita continued. "They're in heaven, but still."

"And to our new one," Mina added. "All of you."

"To all of us," Amy said. "And that Serena and Raye get better soon so we can get on with whatever program they have set up for us."

"I'll drink to that." Lita drank from her cup, as did everyone else.

"Damn, I could use some more of that, Nurse Kuroi! A refill please!"

* * *

Serena lay in her bed, asleep.

She dreamed of her old boyfriend, Mamoru…no, Darien, he changed his name when he moved to the U.S last year.

I need you. I want you. That was the last thing she remembered saying to him. Please help me again. Please.


	9. Chapter VII: We need you

**Chapter VII: We need you.**

**1123hrs, 4 June 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. **

**_"_**_I believe that there are things one chooses to do in life, and also things that are chosen for one to do in life." Lilly Satou, Katawa Shoujo._

* * *

"Um…why are we here?" Amy asked.

Amy, Lita, and Mina were all gathered in a large conference room, along with Dr. Kobayashi, Dr. Kawasaki, and Nurse Kuroi.

"I have no idea," Lita replied.

There was a loud humming noise, like a helicopter in the distance.

_What could that be? _Amy asked herself. _In all the time that we've been here, I haven't heard any aircraft come fly overhead._

The "helicopter" (as Amy assumed) touched down nearby, and about ten minutes passed before the reason why they had gathered everyone there was revealed.

A gaggle of bodyguards entered the room, followed by one man, in his late fifties.

"Minna-san, the Prime Minister of Japan!" one of the bodyguards belted out.

_Oh shit,_ Amy thought, while bowing like everyone else around her. _Didn't see that coming_.

"Ow," Lita complained. Her ribs were still a bit stiff.

The PM bowed back, and then made his way to the three "Ks" as Mina called them.

"Dr. Kobayashi," PM Hasegawa said. "A pleasure to be here."

"Prime Minister, we did not expect you today!" (They were.)

After making small talk to the three "Ks", he walked over to the girls.

"Prime Minister," they all bowed in unison.

"Ow…" Lita said again.

"Please," he replied. "I should be graced by your presence. You are so strong and so hardy to have survived all that."

They were all taken slightly aback by that.

"Prime Minister…" Mina began, but he cut her off.

"Please…we need your help."

Lita snorted at that comment. "Our help? No offense Prime Minister, but I'm missing an arm, two of my friends couldn't join me here today because they've broken every bone in their body or don't have legs anymore, and these two are still recovering," jabbing her thumb at Mina and Amy.

"Ow, dammit, need to stop doing that."

The PM didn't seem to be phased. "Well, maybe Dr. Kobayashi can explain the entire situation to you."

Kobayashi nodded. "Please, everyone, take your seats."

Amy, Mina and Lita took chairs on one side of the big conference table in the room while everyone else took seats on the other side.

"Please open the folders in front of you," Kobayashi said to the girls. There were three lying on the table in front of each person, and Amy opened all of them revealing their contents.

The first folder she opened said, _"Program, Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force (SAILOR-SF) mission statement. The object of this program is to defend Japanese interests around the globe through means of direct action. This includes the selective targeting of individuals with malintent toward Japanese interests _(read, assassination), _the controlled removal of potential valuable material items by means of acquisition or removal _(read, espionage and sabotage), _the collection of information through electronic, signal and human means _(read, spying),_ and if necessary, the deployment of special teams to contain hostile groups by coercive action, including methods that involve termination of said groups _(read, raiding of hostile targets)._ Certain individuals will be selected from the general Japanese populace between the ages of 14-18 (and not from the JSDF) to carry out operations. The reasoning behind the age group selection is the flexibility of learning, the rate of learning, the continued growth of the body post-puberty, and the potential of said persons to become leaders in the society of future Japan."_

Amy looked up from the paper. _Oh shit. This wasn't what I signed up for. We have to kill people?_

She looked at Mina and Lita. Both of them looked really confused, due to the amount of government-speak that was in the mission statement.

"Um," Lita said after reading the first paper. "What does it mean?"

The room was silent for a minute. Dr. Kobayashi decided to speak up, but hesitated before finding the words that he wanted to say.

"Girls…this is something that has to be done in order to preserve our nation. I know that all that you have been through has been difficult. I know that being separated from your families is difficult. I know that until now, you have no idea why you were brought here, kept in small rooms, poked with needles, fed the same thing over and over, and not allowed outside. This is why you were brought here today."

He stopped and looked at the prime minister. The PM nodded for him to continue.

"Japan is dying. You know that."

Amy, Lita and Mina looked at each other. Even as young people, they weren't stupid; even Mina knew what Kobayashi was talking about. There were more and more grey-haired people on the street, more wrinkled faces and hunched backs than they could count. Classes in elementary, junior and high school got smaller and smaller, and there were fewer and fewer young children every year.

"We need a better economy. We need better resources. We need more people. We need time. But that is time we do not have."

He paused again. Amy saw thought she saw tears come to his eyes, but he quickly blinked them away.

"What we're asking you to do is bigger than all of us. By 2050, the population will be cut in half."

That was old news.

"By 2100, our nation will more than likely cease to exist. Japanese culture, language, tradition, maybe even this very island will become no more. Japan will be cast into the history books as a novelty, a cutesy experiment that was overtaken by the Chinese and the West. What we are asking you to do...in the eyes of some, it might seem immoral."

"Immoral?" Lita asked cautiously.

"I will be frank with you. We are asking you to kill people. We are asking you to destroy property. We are asking you to engage in combat. We are asking you to do things that all your life, you have been told not to do."

The PM worryingly glanced at Dr. Kobayashi. That wasn't in the script.

The three girls there were silent.

"But why us?" Mina was still confused, while Lita and Amy were trying to contain their building rage.

PM Hasegawa interjected at this point.

"The explosion was no accident."

Now it was time for Kobayashi to glance at the PM. _That was most definitely not in the script they sent over a week ago,_ he thought.

"Not…an accident?" Lita said slowly.

"What do you mean, 'not an accident'," Amy scowled.

"Check the second folder," the PM said. Kawasaki and Kobayashi had looked at the folder beforehand, but it had just been a CCTV screencap of a maintenance crew doing their thing. A truck stood by with some workers prying off a manhole cover. It didn't mean much to them.

"It's a picture of some road workers," Amy stated. "This doesn't mean anything to me."

"Look to the right of the truck," the PM continued.

Amy looked over to the driver's side of the vehicle. She could make out a worker holding something… some sort of small objects in his hand.

"I see it, I can't make it out what they are from here," Mina said.

"There are more pictures," the PM said.

They flipped back to the same picture, but magnified. The worker was holding what appeared to be a kitchen timer.

"It…it looks like a kitchen timer," Amy noted. "And a mobile."

"Exactly. The public works company started to get complaints after this crew came out here. And if you take a look at the other screencaps…"

Everyone rustled the pictures around to look at them.

"…You can see that the same crew comes out every time."

"That doesn't tell us much," Mina said. "So they were a bit short staffed and they sent the same crew out."

"I had my intelligence team run a background check on that service crew. Turns out, most of them had criminal backgrounds. One of them, that man in the picture with the timer, was an explosives expert for the North Koreans before he defected to the South."

He let the news sink in. The girls were stunned. _Why would anyone…_

"This…so the guy had a bad past," Amy said, but with less conviction. "It doesn't prove much of anything."

"I'd thought you'd say that. So, I brought a video."

The PM motioned for a screen to be pulled down. A white projector screen was rolled down from the ceiling, and a grainy CCTV footage showed that day.

"That's the smoking gun, if you're interested."

Amy looked at the video, noting that the timestamps were in increments of five seconds; 17:11:40, 17:11:45, 17:11:50…

"What's he doing here?" she asked on 17:11:50. "It looks like he's answering his mobile."

"Mmm-hmm. And what does he do after that?" The PM was giving them leading questions, but he had to, in order to steer the girls onto the path he wanted them to go on.

Lita answered.

"He…"

But her voice trailed off. At 17:11:50, the man answered his mobile. At 17:11:55 and 17:12:00 he dropped one, two, three cigarette butts out the window and drove off. At 17:12:30, Mina saw herself run down the street. There was a large flash at 17:12:35, and then the camera cut out.

"There you have it." The girls were silent for a while.

"So, where is the person in the car now?" Amy asked.

"Last picture."

Amy turned to the last photograph. There was the car again, but now a smashed wreck, being towed out of the water.

It made sense, pay a guy to call a number in a certain area, drop some cigarette butts in the road while he's doing it, drive off, then get rid of the evidence. But why so close? Why not just have the guy call from a distance? Where was the phone? Why this road? Why this area? Why not in one of the more high-traffic areas? Why…?

"Amy, I understand your concern." The PM held up to the barrage of questions that the girls had. Even Mina started poking holes in the PM's story.

"Look, Prime Minister," Mina said. "This is all well and good, but this is really…too obvious."

"Perhaps that's the point," the Prime retorted. It was all starting to come into place.

"But why not tell the public?" Lita asked.

"Lita, the last thing Japan needs to be concerned about is terrorism with everything else going on. Do you want this nation to become like the US, jumping at every shadow, shooting everything that moves?"

They couldn't argue with that. 9-11, the PATRIOT Act, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the drug war in Mexico…the U.S certainly had its hands full.

"This is work of an organization with connections that wants to send a message. They are saying that they can attack anywhere they want, and you were just the beginning. They want to scare Japan. But we won't let them."

That kind of made sense. At first glance the entire situation was really stupid. It seemed to be one contrived coincidence on contrived coincidence.

But when you put it all together, yes, it was a coincidence, but it was specifically designed to send a message, maybe not to the population of Japan, but to the heads of state.

On the outside, it was just an accident. Dig deeper…

Amy still wasn't convinced. "I'm not so sure of your evidence." She stood up, along with Mina and Lita. "I think I'm going to leave if you don't have anything more." There was nowhere they could go, but the threat is what Amy was going for.

"This is all we have," the PM said. "I beg of you…please." He got out of his chair, and got on his knees and bowed. So did everyone else in the room. This was the ultimate sign of deference, respect and begging that one could give in Japan. And coming from the Prime Minister of Japan, that…well, that really meant things were going south.

Mina, Amy and Lita all stood there, dumbfounded.

"I…" Amy just couldn't believe it. Maybe the PM was right. Something didn't click, but if they followed the rabbit hole, maybe they would get the answers they were looking for. And if he was willing to put it all on the line for them, maybe they should do the same.

"I can't speak for my friends," she said. "But I believe you. I will work for this program that you have."

"Thank you." The PM braced himself for what was going to come. He stood back up with everyone else.

"But."

If she was doing this, then she was going to milk them for all they were worth.

"I was told earlier I would get the equivalent of a Todai degree. I want your reassurance that this will happen."

"Of course."

"Next, my mother pays reduced taxes for the rest of her life, and her pensions guaranteed."

"Done."

"I get a pension, starting immediately and paid out every quarter with adjustments for inflation. I want health insurance, paid for by the government. I want to be exempted from all taxes, barring sales tax. I want access to all government facilities, access to all government databases, free flights on all Japanese airlines, free public transport card, free utilities, a guaranteed admissions to Keio University after I get out of this program, an apartment guaranteed in the city of Hino, a country villa in Shirakawa, and a library card that is good at all libraries including universities that never expires."

The PM's aides were scribbling as fast as they could.

Lita and Mina stared at Amy. They didn't know half the stuff she was talking about.

"Uh…I'll have what she's having," Lita awkwardly said.

"Me too," chimed Mina. "But I want a driver's license. And if I get a parking ticket, I don't want to pay it either. "

Amy rolled her eyes at that one.

"Done, done, and done. I assume that you two are joining this program then?"

"Yeah, sure," Lita said. "Since we can't go back, might as well have something to tell when I get older."

"I'm kind of excited," Mina said. "I've never shot a gun before."

"Very well then." The PM was relieved that this was working out.

"What about Serena and Raye?" Amy thought of those two, still lying their beds, unable to do anything.

"We'll get to that when they're ready," Kawasaki said.

The PM bowed again and promised that everything possible would be done for them. He shook their hands, thanking them profusely.

It was probably the biggest lie he had ever told in his entire life; and that was saying something coming from a career politician.


	10. Chapter VIII: Where's the Beef?

**Chapter VIII: Where's the Beef?**

**1020hrs, 7 June 2013, Washington DC, United States.**

_"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." Alexis de Tocqueville_

_"You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think." Milton Berle._

* * *

"This session of the United States House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry is now in order."

The Chairman of the subcommittee, Representative Charles O'Conner (D-Illinois, 9th District), banged the gavel and sighed loudly. A sixty-something, grey haired, pot-belled single Irish-American, he was in the twilight of his career; after thirty two years (that's sixteen elections!) of service, he was getting tired of the political process. He was good for helping the freshman representatives get adjusted to the inner workings of Congress, and good for getting a few favors here and there but most of the time now he was becoming increasingly isolated as party leadership wanted someone else to run the show. Times were changing, and they wanted a more "hip" look to it, and O'Conner was not the new image they wanted. So here he was, stuck in a bullshit (figuratively and literally speaking) subcommittee, talking about egg production, birthing rate of sows, humane slaughter methods, wider cages for chickens, what type of feed they got, who produced it...this was a world apart from when he sat on the famous Ways and Means Committee in the 1990s. And the most stupid thing about it? He was from a district that was completely urban and had nothing to do with Agriculture. This was a do nothing position for a do nothing congressman.

"I would now like to recognize ranking member Jorge Trevino for his opening remarks," O'Conner said, distractively. He took a glance around the room; despite the boring name of the subcommittee, it was packed full of enterprising people who wanted to see their government in action, no matter how trivial or petty it might seem.

"Thank you Chairman O'Conner. I also thank the witnesses who have taken time out your busy schedules to come and testify here. As you all are aware, the continued rise in corn prices has affected the feed for cattle, thereby raising the price of beef in the last four months."

The ranking member's voice blurred into the background as Charles drifted off to his glory days on power committees. Ways and Means. Armed Services. Energy and Commerce. Ethics. Those were the days.

"I would like to call our first witness to the stand, Mr. Mark Delagarza."

_This is going to be a long, long, long day. Where is my whisky flask when I need it?_

"Thank you Mr. Chairman, Representative Trevino. I represent the Beef and Cattle Association, and over the last couple of months, we have watched with concern over…"

Two hours later, the subcommittee adjourned for lunch.

_About fucking time, gotta get out of here and back to the office. Too bad Madam's Organ Bar doesn't open until later today._

"Representative O'Conner." A female's voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Representative Clemens," he replied gruffly.

* * *

Georgia Clemens (R-Georgia, 5th District and yes, having the same name of the state was the source of many jokes), was one of the freshmen representatives elected in the 2012 election. She was a very new member on the political scene in general, not counting her surprise announcement to run for Congress. Born in a black, working class neighborhood, her father always told her that she could do great things. After getting an undergrad at Winston-Salem in Political Science, she went to law school and at the University of Virginia and worked at a couple of law firms doing research before returning home and holding some minor elected offices before running for Congress.

"I was wondering if we could take lunch together. Like last week?"

O'Conner signed. "Jesus, you newbies don't let up. Plus, I'm a Democrat, and you know how your side feels about Democrats these days." He turned away but Georgia grabbed his arm.

"Oh come on, that's never stopped you in the past. I think you like it."

O'Conner grunted at that statement, but she was right. He was one of the few old school Democrats like in days gone past, conservative (yes, there is such a thing) but not too conservative (he never cared for those limousine liberals anyway), for big government, but just big enough to take a slice of the pie and run with it. Social issues he couldn't care about at all. Abortion, contraception, whatever. That was for people wanted controversy with a quick and easy voter turnout. All talk and no action.

"Dammit. Fine. How does Five Guys sound?"

Georgia smiled. "Only if you can chauffeur us there."

"Deal."

Ten minutes later, they were at the only Five Guys burger joint in town, at 1825 I Street Northwest.

Charles got the Bacon Cheeseburger with A1 sauce, grilled onions, lettuce, and mayo while Georgia got the little burger with mustard, lettuce and nothing else. Not even fries or a drink.

"That is the most pathetic meal I have ever seen anyone eat," O'Conner said of her meal. He took a bite of his burger, spewing juices everywhere.

"Well, I try to watch what I eat," Georgia replied. "Didn't you hear about the guy, ah, what was his name today…Bob Evers, that's it. Anyway, he was going on about the Nakanishi Group."

"Fucking Japs." O'Conner didn't really care about political correctness most of the time. "My daddy fought against them at Tarawa. Wounded his ass so bad he couldn't walk for months."

Georgia politely ignored the casual racism and continued on.

"Well, he complained to us that the Nakanishi group was trying to buy up all his land. When he refused, they bought out the company he was contracting with and used that to get to his land."

"Can't trust the slanty-eyed suckers." He remembered the 1980's when Japan seemed to be taking over everything, flooding the market with their high-quality cars and appliances. The phones in his office never stopped ringing with the concerns of his constituents, worried that they would lose their jobs or worse, have to work for a Japanese boss. Now the phones rang again, this time about China.

Again, Georgia ignored that comment. "So the North America arm of the Nakanishi group has been popping up a lot in our hearings, buying up lots of land and such. I got to thinking, why do they need all that land?"

"Uh-huh," mumbled O'Conner, taking another bite of hamburger.

"So I contacted their PR office and the response I got was that they are planning to expand their company and get into the food industry here in the US."

That got O'Conner's attention. "Hold on, didn't you say that they were buying up agricultural land? I don't know much about that Jap company, but that seems like very odd maneuver for a tech company."

"Exactly. So…" She pulled out some paper from her purse. "I put this together."

Wiping his hands on some napkins, O'Conner put on his reading glasses and looked at the documents.

"So, they buy all this agricultural land, but aren't in agro-business. Huh, it says here that they've bought up plots of land in Hawaii, California, Utah, Minnesota, Iowa, and Texas. They also own companies that specialize in construction, transportation, and...three beef processing plants?

"Uh-huh. Beef processing plants."

"So it says here that they bought a shipping company that specializes in cold-storage shipping. Man, what are these guys up to? And it also says that they own a Japanese farm that specializes in Kobe beef." He flipped the page.

"Keep reading."

He looked back down at the document. "But the farm hasn't had cows in, years. They were sold off at auction to another company." There was a table on the side that showed how many tons of Kobe beef they exported to the US. Rather than decreasing, it actually went up. The shipping rate increased to match the exports. All this information was making O'Conner's head spin…or maybe it was just his heart acting up again.

"Stuff keeps coming here from that farm marked as 'beef.' It passes the USDA stuff and everything."

"Why do you think that is?" Georgia was simply curious about how these things worked.

"Where did you get this?" he asked.

"Well, I compiled it from customs information, Nakanishi's published reports, some other companies in the US that they bought out, stuff like that. The agriculture and shipping stuff was buried in like the 500th page of their annual report."

O'Conner shrugged. "They could just get their beef from other companies and ship it here to be processed."

"I thought that too, but they haven't done business with anybody like that in Japan. Those big businesses, they're called…uh, kai…key…kayraitsu (she butchered the pronunciation), right. Most of them have their hands in some sort of food industry, but this is just peanuts compared to them. This is the only agricultural operation they have their hands in. Everything they have is tech or finance related."

O'Conner leaned back in his chair. "So, a tech and finance company wants in on the food industry, but sells their only remaining cattle off, and somehow keeps shipping beef here using their shell company. And they don't do business with any other agro-business corporations."

Georgia nodded. "Well, as of now, they're starting business with other big food companies here." She continued looking from her notes. "Their CEO is money obsessed. He closes down an operation if it doesn't generate profit within a certain amount of time. This type of operation, to get involved in where margins are already low enough to begin with, competing with other companies and nations that have way more experience in these matters, to ship expensive beef across the Pacific and then continue shipments after closing up shop doesn't make any sense. They might do it for other things, like tech or even heavy industry stuff, but why buy out other companies wholesale when you can just get some other company to ship it for you at a cheaper price?"

This was very interesting news indeed. For the first time in months, Charles O'Conner had a sense of purpose again, even if it turned out to be nothing.

"Where is the closest beef processing plant that they own?"

Georgia pulled out some notes from her purse. "Um, Hawkings' Processing Plant, in Orange, Virginia of all places."

"That's about a two-hour drive, right? Close enough. I think it's time for a field trip."

"On taxpayers' money?" Georgia was wary of spending her constituents' money on something that might turn out to be nothing.

"It's official, no harm done."

"What about the Secret Service? Or the Capitol Police?" Georgia did have a point there, but…

"The Secret Service doesn't really have jurisdiction in protecting us," O'Conner said. "Even after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, they have been kind of slow to put security of any kind us. The Capitol police has the rest of DC to worry about, and they're not going to baby a couple of Reps. Plus if they did, they don't have the personnel to do so. I'll call someone and let them know we're going out but other than that, we're on our own."

Georgia was seemed convinced by that. "Well then, let's do this."

* * *

Agent Robert Greyson was the Secret Service agent on duty that day at the VP residence (Number One Observatory Circle)**.** They had just had to corral him into the house for now, under orders from the president because he had been drunk. Again. In the middle of the day. Thankfully he didn't have anything important scheduled so all his appointments were cancelled. Greyson's phone in his pocket started to ring. He looked at the number, and recognizing it, picked up.

"Agent Greyson speaking."

"Hey Bob, it's me! Charles!"

Greyson sighed. "No, I'm not free to go to the bar today."

"It's not that."

"Then what is it?" Greyson was getting very annoyed. Representative O'Conner was a good man, but really annoying at times. "Please, I'm on duty and I need to get back to work."

"Oh come on, I know you're guarding the VP and he's drunk off his ass again, so just pay attention for a second, at least for the person who helped you get this job."

Greyson dropped his head in disgust. _Thanks for reminding me._

"What do you want?"

"Well, another rep and I are going up to visit a place for our subcommittee, a beef processing plant or something. Just wanted to let you know we're heading out there, and if we run into any trouble, I'll give you a call."

"That's it?" _You called me for this?_

"That's it."

"Okay, whatever. Sure thing." _That is the most stupid request I have ever heard him ask for. _

"Thanks a million Bob!"

"You're welcome, Charles."

O'Conner hung up the phone. _Christ,_ Greyson thought. _This is the guy who helped me get into the Secret Service? What was I thinking?_ _Oh well._

He went back to staring at the bland wallpaper at the wall, waiting for the VP to eventually sober up.


	11. Chapter IX: 1UP

**Chapter IX: 1-UP**

**1312hrs, 8 June 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"Wanna swoop in your white charger and save the day? Stop the nightmares, the phantom limb pains? Restore what's lost? Well you can't! Nobody can. Nobody will." Emi Ibarazaki, Katawa Shoujo_

* * *

"Okay, bring it in here!" Kawasaki was directing a plethora of orderlies bring in all sorts of equipment. He was in the basement of the facility, where more operation rooms were located.

"What's going on?" Lita asked.

Amy, Lita and Mina had just finished lunch and had heard all the commotion in the basement. They had poked around here a couple of times, but there really wasn't much to see.

"Ah, girls," Kawasaki said, looking over his shoulder. He was trying to get the orderlies to move a very big tank, kind of like those dunking things that you throw baseballs at. "I was just about to send Nurse Kuroi to get you."

"Uh…what is it?" Mina asked.

"Follow me please." Kawasaki walked down the hall to a large room. There was an observation room to the left of it. "In here." He held the door open.

"Okay…"

Everyone walked into the room. There was a big one-way glass window looking into the room, along with some TV monitors, computers, and other assorted material lining the walls. Mina could see that the tank was being set up and filled with a clear, goopy fluid. Technicians were plugging in equipment, making sure that everything was cleaned and ready go, checking the tubes feeding the liquid into the tank from big oil-drum like containers.

"What is that stuff?" Amy asked.

Dr. Kawasaki beamed when she asked that question. "I'll explain in just a moment." He reached for the PA system microphone and spoke into it.

"Are we almost ready?"

"Yeah, we're finished here," was the reply from one of the technicians.

"Good, prepare to bring down our first patient."

The girls looked at each other.

"Who…?" Mina was getting really nervous now. Every day seemed to get stranger ever since the PM's visit.

"You'll see."

Ten minutes later, a bed was rolled into the room.

"Serena!" Everyone pressed their faces against the window. They hadn't been allowed to see Serena since they arrived there.

"Oh God…" Lita covered her mouth. Serena still looked really bad, even though she had been covered head to toe with bandages.

"Normally," Dr. Kawasaki interrupted their staring at Serena, "Ms. Serena there would be in hospital for months…years maybe. Her injuries are very extensive."

"So…what's this tank have to do with it?" Amy asked.

"The tank is being filled with a special fluid that was developed by some of our researchers a couple of years ago, but has only as of late come into low-level production."

"And what does this 'fluid' do?" Mina was looking at the orderlies, who were hooking up tubes to Serena in all sorts of places. Nurse Kuroi was also down there, directing them.

"Well, it helps to heal the body, basically."

"How long will it take?" This was very fascinating to Amy. _ A fluid that could help treat injuries? Amazing. It was almost like that Bacta stuff in Star Wars._

"Serena has severe burns. When left to heal normally, they will scar and leave her outward appearance in a deformed state. The fluid treatment will repair the skin in thirty seconds."

The girls looked at him.

"Thirty seconds?!" Mina asked.

"Why didn't we get this treatment?" Amy said, now cross.

"We didn't have enough of it made two weeks ago. But we got a company to help make some more, and now we are going to start helping all of you now."

_The Nakanishi Group really got this stuff produced fast,_ Kawasaki thought to himself. _Didn't think they would do it. And Kobayashi thinks they're crap. Well, guess who's laughing now?_

"Serena and Raye are injured the most out of all you, so we have to get them treated first."

Amy looked back down at Serena. She was being prepped to be lowered into the tank now. The bandages were being stripped away…god. Serena's skin was all red and in some places, it was apparent the burns had gone very, very deep. She didn't look human anymore.

She forgot her anger and reminded herself that they were worse off and that her treatment could wait. Amy still had some burn marks on her body and arms, and while they hurt, she knew that they were nothing compared to Serena in front of them, Raye, or even Lita, who sometimes swore in pain when she walked.

"Dr. Kawasaki," Kuroi said over the intercom. "We're ready on this end."

"Affirmative. Please place Ms. Tsukino i into the solution please."

* * *

Serena was semi-conscious when she had been moved earlier that day. She knew that she was being moved around, and that she still was in pain.

"Hi Serena." Kuroi's voice had really been her only source of human contact for the last couple of weeks.

Nurse Kuroi squeezed her bandaged hand. "Today, everything will be better," she told her.

They strapped her into something, there were tubes going in and out of her…it was a weird sensation, but there was nothing she could do about it. Then they lifted her up and place her in a harness.

_What's going on? What are they doing to me?_ Serena hadn't felt this panicked since she had first been brought in this place. She felt the bandages being taken off and she groaned in pain. Talking still hadn't really come back, but at least she could grunt.

"It's okay, it's okay," Kuroi reassured her. "We are going to place you in some very special fluid that will heal you. It's completely safe, I give you my word." Kuroi placed a rebreather over her mouth.

"Dr. Kawasaki," Serena heard Kuroi talking into an intercom. "We're ready on this end."

"Affirmative. Please place Ms. Tsukino into the solution please."

The technicians lowered the harness down into the fluid. Immediately Serena felt a cooling sensation over her entire body. Her burns began to heal at an astounding rate. In thirty seconds, her burns had all but disappeared, healed permanently. The internal injuries however, would take more treatments and nothing could bring back her missing legs and fingers.

* * *

The technicians brought her back out again. The green liquid had now turned clear and foamy. Serena was loaded onto a stretcher and carted off.

"Why does it turn clear and foam like that?" Mina asked Dr. Kawasaki.

"It does that because it becomes inert after one use. It can't be reused after someone has been in it for more than thirty seconds, tops."

"And this is because…?" Amy smelled something fishy here, like everything else that was going on. But she was just playing along, biding her time.

"Amy, I really don't know the science behind that," Kawasaki replied, dodging the question quite skillfully (in his mind).

"Uh-huh."

"Really, I don't." There was a slight pause before Kawasaki got them moving again.

"But thirty seconds was more than enough time for Serena to heal. I think maybe you should go talk to her now. She'll be in the hallway."

The girls quickly scurried out of the observation room, leaving Kawasaki standing there. He then got on the phone and started calling upstairs to get the next patient ready for treatment in a couple of hours.

* * *

"Serena!"

She hadn't heard those voices in forever. Right after her healing, Kuroi had just told her the news about her family situation and she had disbelieved it at first.

"But…but…"

"Serena, your friends have accepted this situation, and have been living with it for the last couple of weeks. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Talk to them if you want to know any more." She wheeled her out into the hallway. Serena pushed the conversation out of her mind. _It's not true._

"Hi guys!" _I can talk again! To real people, not that stupid nurse. Goddamn, this feels great!_

Amy, Lita and Mina had surrounded Serena in the hallway. She was in a wheelchair now, pushed by Nurse Kuroi and flanked by Dr. Kobayashi, with no hair but looking better than ever.

"It feels so weird not to have any hair," she jokingly complained. "But I see I'm not alone in that."

Mina rolled her eyes. "It's gonna grow back."

Serena's stomach growled. "Oh god, I'm so hungry. Um, hey, doctor person."

That was Kobayashi. "Can I eat something now? Like, something that's not from a tube?"

He gave a small smile. "I think you should be okay, but just have a little because your body can't handle that much food right now. I'll have Nurse Kuroi take you upstairs to the cafeteria."

"No, I'll take her up there!" Mina said. She pushed Kuroi out of the way and started rolling Serena down the hall to the elevator at top speed.

"Hey, careful!" Kuroi yelled, but Amy and Lita were already in hot pursuit, yelling and laughing all the while. They all piled into the elevator and were gone.

"It's good to see them have fun," Kobayashi said. "I think it will definitely help them and the SAILOR program."

"I certainly hope so," Kuroi replied sadly. "I certainly hope so."

* * *

Serena had piled a moderate amount of food in front of her; it was Japanese food today. Doughnuts would be soon in coming, but not for this meal. Omurice, sashimi, rice, nori, miso soup and tea filled the tray in front of her. The other girls sat on the other side of the table from her.

"God, it's so difficult," she complained. Like Lita, she was using a fork since the missing fingers on her right hand made it difficult to eat and she wasn't used to eating with the left.

"Tell me about it," Lita said. "You'll get used to it. I think."

"What have you been up to while I…" Serena trailed off. She didn't want to think about all that time lying there, in pain. Her legs missing didn't make it better.

Sensing this, Mina quickly butted in. "We're going to be doing something totally cool for the government."

Amy glared at Mina. _Not yet you idiot! _Mina's eyes shot back. _Sorry._

"And what type of work is this…?" Serena put down her fork. The conversation she had earlier with Kuroi was coming back.

"Serena," Lita said, but Amy interrupted.

"We weren't going to tell you this until later," she said, looking down at the cup of tea she was drinking, "But we are going to work for the government to do some…unsavory things."

"Savory? You mean like how meat tastes?"

Everyone had to stifle a giggle at that statement.

"No dumbass," Lita snickered. She returned to a more serious tone. "We are going to basically going to be a special operations team, going around the world and…'protecting' Japanese interests."

Serena got the meaning that statement; even a complete dumbass could see behind that rhetoric.

"And you three agreed to it?" Serena was getting irritated. "What about college? What about my family?" Nurse Kuroi's words came back to her. "I can't go back to my family?"

Lita, Amy and Mina shook their heads. "None of can. Even Raye knows that by now."

Serena sighed. _Fucking hell._

"Look, they gave us all of this stuff," Mina said. "Our families will be set for life if we do this."

"But we can't see them again?"

"Never again. That's the price of all this," Amy replied. "I don't like it either. But my mother is a smart lady. And she would not give me up unless she had a goddamn good reason to do so."

Lita and Mina agreed with her.

Serena looked down. This wasn't right at all, but what she could do?

Amy leaned over to her and whispered in her ear.

"Serena, we can follow this wherever this goes," she said. "They need us, and we can probably get some more information in the future. But for now, we need to play along. I believe in what this program is doing, but I want more information too."

She sighed, and sat back.

Serena looked at everyone at the table.

"Okay. I'm in."

Everyone smiled. "I'll toast to that," Lita said.

They all raised their tea glasses.

"To our new future," she said.

"With Serena, finally," Mina added.

That got a laugh.


	12. Chapter X: That's not kosher

**Chapter X: That's not kosher.**

**0900hrs, 8 June 2013, Hawkings' Beef Processing Plant, Orange, Virginia, United States**

_"All life is a blur of Republicans and meat." Bill Griffith_

* * *

The drive to Orange, Virginia had been mostly a boring one. There wasn't much traffic on a Saturday and since there were no sessions scheduled for that day (who wants to work on a weekend?), Representative O'Conner and Georgia Clemens had decided to investigate the mystery meat factory near this sleepy town of 5000 people.

"Soo…you got a boyfriend or something?" O'Conner asked Georgia. He was driving a government owned Chevy Suburban.

"Nah, didn't have time for one in college or law school. And with job now, well, don't want any more attention than needed. You got a boyfriend too?" she joked. _Not that there is anything wrong with being gay, _she thought. _Of course, Mr. Macho here isn't so tolerant of such things._

O'Conner snorted. "Ha, ha. Very funny Ms. Clemens. How far are we to the destination?"

Georgia took out her Android Global 2 from her purse and poked around until she got to the maps. She had been often chided for not having an iPhone, but whatever.

"Okay, we're on Constitution Highway…take a left onto State Route 631. Then take a left onto State Route 612 and we should see it on the left."

Ten minutes later, they were parked outside a small group of buildings, all abandoned. The place itself was located in a big field, surrounded by trees on all sides. The smell of freshly cut grass and pine filled the early morning air, making for a serene morning in Appalachia.

"This is what they bought?" O'Conner said in confusion. There were what appeared to be a storage building, a small processing plant, some offices and a parking lot. It was all gated off as well, with big signs saying "KEEP OUT! TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED!"

"Yeah, this is the address on the property deed," Georgia said, again looking at her smartphone. "Of course, it is a Saturday, so maybe no one works on a weekend."

"I doubt it," O'Conner said. "I knew some meat packing plants in the rural areas where I lived, and they never closed. They have to be open all time. The demand for meat is just too high to stay closed on Saturday."

He studied the entrance to the plant. There were some fresh tire marks in the gravel there.

"Hold on, I have an idea." Quickly, he turned the SUV around and parked it across the street in a thicket of woods.

"What are you doing?" Georgia asked.

"Someone's been here recently," he said. "I want to see if they come back. Did you bring something to read?"

"Yeah." Georgia brought up the Kindle reader on her smartphone and started in on the newest Dean Koonz novel. "How long do you think we're going to be here?"

"A couple of hours, maybe."

"Alright then."

There wasn't much traffic on this stretch of road; being in rural Virginia made it a nice spot if you wanted to hide something. It wasn't too far a drive to Washington DC from here, and if you wanted to stage something…

One hour passed. Nothing. Two hours. Nothing. Three hours.

"I'm glad I didn't have much to eat this morning," Georgia said after O'Conner had gotten out of the SUV to take a piss. Again.

"Whatever. I have a small bladder."

He settled back into his car seat. Georgia was still reading her novel. He briefly closed his eyes, making sure to be as aware as possible in case something came up.

"Why did you want to become a Representative?"

He opened his eyes. Georgia was staring at him.

"Why did _you_ want to become a Representative?" he retorted sarcastically, but with a chuckle. "Alright, I became a Representative because I wanted to serve my district. See, our previous rep always cared about the votes, but never any real change. The only time he came to see us is when election season rolled around. I was just a clerk at a commerce firm at the time, and I kind of got fed up with him sucking our district dry. No one would stand up to him, so I did."

"How did you ever win?" Georgia asked. "It took me an arm and a leg to just to get past the caucus."

"Turns out, everyone else was sick of him too, including his own party." He laughed at that. "Man, he lost so fast, it wasn't even a contest. That's the only time I've seen Repubs and Dems work together for a single candidate. And it's worked out ever since. I always, always make sure to go back to my constituency and listen to their problems. I don't have a big ideological stance because quite frankly, I shouldn't have one. The people of the 9th District elected me to serve their needs, not for me to grandstand."

Georgia smiled. "That's pretty noble of you."

O'Conner just shrugged at that. "Meh. I'm just a washed up Irishman with a career dead in the water. It's about time for me to go anyway." He shot a smile at Representative Clemens. "Your turn."

She sighed. "Well, the previous representative stepped down due to that sex scandal (it had to do something with bananas, a can of hairspray and a jar of pickles) and after working in law firms I was like, well, I can do this. My district is pretty working class, but they voted Republican because the got more money from them than they do Democrats."

O'Conner rolled his eyes. "Typical."

"Anyway, I served on a couple elected positions, school board, constable, that sort of thing. Then the seat opened up and I jumped at the chance. It took a while, but I got the seat and beat out all the other competitors. I want to make a difference, not only for my constituency, but for America as well."

O'Conner smiled at that. "Oh, the naivety of youth."

"Well, we'll see about that," she replied.

Suddenly, a couple of SUVs came barreling down the road and quickly turned into the entrance to the plant. They were followed closely by an eighteen wheeler.

"Hello, what do we have here?" O'Conner brought some small binoculars up to his eyes and peered through them.

Some men got out of the SUVs and unlocked the gate. The eighteen wheeler went through and stopped in front of the storage house. More men got out and started patrolling the perimeter.

"They have guns," Georgia noted. The men on the perimeter were carrying pistols, concealed underneath their coats, but some others were carrying hunting rifles with scopes.

"These guys mean business." O'Conner reached for the ignition. "I'm getting us out of here."

Georgia stopped him. "Wait, what are they doing with the trailer there?"

Some of the men were now unloading the trailer; it was one of those refrigerated ones, but it wasn't beef or slaughtered cows they were unloading. Instead, large metal boxes came out with the men and into the storage area.

* * *

One of the men with the sniper rifle got on top of the roof of the processing plant; it was about three stories high, not great, but at least the entire area around them was clear. He stared scanning the area around the plant and immediately noticed a black SUV parked in a grove of trees right across from them. He reached for his radio.

"Hey Nephrite," he said. "There's a black SUV with government plates right across from us, parked in that grove of trees. What do you want me to do about it?"

"Do you have the license number on it?" came the reply from "Nephrite".

"Yeah, got it written down here."

"Fire a warning shot."

"Sir? Firing a shot might not be the best idea. It might attract too much attention."

"Do it."

"Yes sir." The man aimed a little to the right of the car and fired.

* * *

The bullet whipped past, thwacking into an oak next to the car.

"Jesus!" O'Conner swore and promised he'd go back to mass again. He turned on the ignition and floored it out of there.

"Oh shit, oh shit," Georgia muttered to herself. She shrunk down into the car seat and tried to make herself small.

The O'Conner kept the speedometer at 100 miles an hour for a good minute after that, then slowed down when they got to the main highway.

"Fuck," he cursed. "I haven't been under fire since 'Nam."

"This thing is getting out of control," Georgia said. "We need to tell someone."

"We got to get out of here and back to Washington first." O'Conner was already looking at his ancient flip-phone for the number he had called earlier.

* * *

The VP was still drunk, and the Secret Service agents in the Number One Observatory Circle had to raid his room to remove all the bottles of liquor in his bar (they somehow never made their way back). Agent Greyson was eating his lunch when his phone rang. It was the number from before. Greyson answered, grudgingly.

"What do you want Charles?"

"Someone took a fucking potshot at us!" O'Conner's voice was extremely panicked.

That made Greyson sit up.

"Okay, you're in Orange, VA, right?"

"Yeah, we went to this meat processing plant, but it was empty! And then some people drove up and they started fucking shooting at us! I'm driving as fast as I can away from here!"

"Okay, where are you now?" Greyson's mind was racing on how he could get some agents there, call local police, set up some roadblocks, maybe get the FBI involved, somehow…

"We're driving on Constitution Highway, toward 522." He had calmed down at bit now.

"Are you being followed?"

"I don't think so, but I'm going to do some loops before coming back here…"

That was all Greyson got to hear before the line went dead.

"Hello…? Hello…?"

"Agent Greyson."

A cold voice made him look up. It was his supervisor.

"Greyson, if that call was from Representative O'Conner, you are to disregard that message in full."

Greyson blinked, then put the phone down. "Yes sir," was his reply. _What the hell is going on?_

* * *

"Bob! Bob?! Dammit!"

"What's going on?" Georgia was trying to call somebody, anybody, but all she kept getting busy signals.

"I don't know." O'Conner was trying to think things through. _They more than likely saw us and probably got our license plate number, but all we need to do is get back and change the plates out…just have one of the shop guys do that. But they couldn't have gotten to his Secret Service contact, could they?_

They made the two hour trip back in an hour and a half, O'Conner was driving so fast. He bounced the SUV into the garage building of the Rayburn House Office Building, on Independence Avenue and South Capitol Street.  
O'Conner quickly shut off the SUV and jumped out of the seat. "Come on, we need to…" he started to say to Georgia, but was interrupted by a tap on the shoulder.

"Hello, you must be Representative O'Conner."

He turned around to see three men in fancy, pressed suits all smartly waiting by his parking spot.

"Shit." Lobbyists.

"Representative O'Conner. Representative Clemens," one of the men said. "We represent the interests of the North American group of the Nakanishi Group."

_Oh fuck. And we were close to something then._ Georgia thought.

"We've heard…reports that you may or may not have been, ah, spying for lack of a better term, on one of our facilities," another man said.

"This is a completely normal business operation."

"If you can call sniper fire 'normal'," Georgia snarled at them. The men smiled and continued on.

"Like we were saying, a completely normal business operation. If you persist in this course of action however, we will be forced to reveal your sexual escapades with each other to the public."

"What 'escapades'…" O'Conner began, but he'd been a Congressman long enough to see where this was heading. A young, naïve Congresswoman goes out with a gruff and experienced Congressman on a weekend out, they come back later "refreshed"…yeah this wasn't going to end well.

"What do you want us to do?" O'Conner said, resigned. Georgia looked at him, but she knew that they were in a tight spot.

"Please. Drop this issue, and maybe you might find some better work at our company after you retire," one of the men said (Georgia later nicknamed him "LAME": Lame ass male executive. The other two she nicknamed "SAM", or Smart-ass Motherfucker, and HAL, Hard-Ass Lobbyist). LAME continued on. "Ms. Clemens, you might find that your career here might be long and prosperous, especially for your district, which is need of jobs and money."

"But," SAM said. "If you continue on…well, we've discussed what will happen."

"And both of you can kiss your careers and social lives, away," HAL finished.

There was a moment of silence. The two Representatives didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

"Fine," O'Conner said gruffly. Georgia could only nod.

"I'm glad that we could come to an agreement," LAME said with a smile. SAM and HAL nodded in agreement. "Good day to you all."

They left, leaving Georgia and O'Conner seething in anger by their SUV.

* * *

"I can't do anything about it," Greyson said to O'Conner at Madam Organ's Bar. There was some blues music playing in the background, which was appropriate.

"Bob, there has to be something that we can do." O'Conner took a shot of whisky.

"Dammit Charles, my hands are tied on this one. My super won't let me press the issue any further."

O'Conner sighed. "There is something going on here," taking another shot of whisky. "And it's really big. And I want to know what the hell it is."

"But it looks like now," Greyson said, "You're stuck."

"Gotta lay low for a little bit," O'Conner replied. "But I'll get back at them. Me and that Georgia lady, we'll find a way." He took another sip of whisky, and leaned back in his bar stool. The band played on, oblivious to the woes and tribulations around them.


	13. Chapter XI: Senshi awakening

**Chapter XI: Senshi awakening.**

**1740hrs, 8 July 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"Building the morale and confidence of security forces should be a primary strategic objective. Committing poorly trained and badly led forces results in high casualties and invites tactical defeats."_

_US Army and Marine Corps Counter-Insurgency Field Manual._

_"I am Sailor Moon, the champion of justice. In the name of the moon, I will right wrong and triumph over evil... and that means you!"_

* * *

Raye had finally come through, and she was doing much, much better after she had been dipped into the healing solution. The taking off of the bandages beforehand though...she set some sort of record for the most amount of F-bombs and variations thereof dropped in one hour at that facility (the now shattered record was 103 in one hour by one of the "previous" patients. Raye's count was 110.) Of course, in the recorded video of the incident, it all ended up getting bleeped out in post, for the benefit of the Joint Chiefs who would be watching later.

Everyone else was coming along nicely now too. The burns were healed, bones mended, and prosthetic limbs for Lita and Serena, with some fingers for Raye as well. They had been moved to better rooms now, with a TV and computer and everything.

The turning point had been when they called all the girls in for a special surgery session.

"Girls," Kobayashi said in the prepping room. "We have to do some routine surgery on you, just to make sure that we got everything, no swelling of the brain, nothing in there that could hurt you. This is going to be the last one, we promise."

"Whatever," was the reply. At this point, the doctors had done so much testing and surgery, they kind of didn't care. Go under for a couple of hours, get immersed in some fluid, come out good as new. An added benefit that Serena and Mina found out with much joy is that with multiple treatments of the fluid, their hair grew back to its original length in a month's time instead of maybe a year or so.

They had done some training as well, some handling of weapons ("How do I shot this?" Mina asked, looking down the barrel of a Glock 19 before the instructor quickly took it away), some geopolitical theory and study of other nations hard and soft power capabilities, some physical training although this was limited to some extent by the lack of limbs in Serena, who could barely walk again even with the prosthetics. She underwent labor intensive, painful and frustrating physical therapy just to learn how to walk again.

But that was all about to change.

The surgery went ahead as planned. Amy, like all the others, went under with some nice aesthesia.

_So pleasant. I can see how people get addicted to the stuff, _she thought as the mask was applied. Within thirty seconds, she was out.

* * *

"Okay, are the microchips ready?" Kobayashi asked Kawasaki. In addition to being a general practitioner, he was also a brain surgeon. No wonder the government had snapped him up to do their hush-hush work. He was just that good.

"Yes, they are ready. Do you think this will work?" Kawasaki was a little bit nervous, for the girls of course, but if they failed…well, this wasn't the thing that you considered failure for. The consequences were just too high.

"It has to work." Kobayashi said. He finished washing his hands. Both doctors were now in scrubs, ready to begin their work.

"Let's go practice medicine," Kobayashi calmly stated, snapping on those sterile gloves for surgery.

The procedure would take no longer than thirty minutes for each girl since the incisions would not be too invasive, but that was still two and a half hours. Every time that the doctors finished, they would have to go through a checklist to make sure they didn't fuck things up, change out gloves, scrubs, equipment, and everything else, just to start over again. It wasn't the longest procedure done in the world, but it would be very taxing. The several microchips would be placed in all the lobes of the brain (the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe), in order to increase processing power, learning rate, mobility, sensory attention, retention of memory, and a host of other things to make the perfect soldier.

One effect that was not particularly discussed was the microchips' ability to modify behavior.

Three hours later, after much work and healing solution later, the girls woke up. But something was different. They woke up on some beds in one of the recovery rooms, acutely aware of the difference.

Amy felt it. She was alive again! She could smell things that she could not have smelled before, taste the air around her, everything she touched was an explosion of sensations that she had never felt in her life. She was acutely aware of everything around her, from the other girls and their breathing patterns, her own heart rate…it was about eighty beats a minute. _Wait, I just calculated my heart rate…without even checking my vitals. What did they do me? _

Serena got up and walked around. In confusion, she looked down. Her prosthetic legs were still there, but she could move without pain, without the slow, limbering pace that she used to walk beforehand. She jumped up…and touched the ceiling. With her legs. She did a somersault and landed back down on the ground.

"Holy shit!" Lita exclaimed. "How did you do that?"

"I…I don't know," she replied. "I couldn't walk beforehand and now I can do all this stuff now!"

Lita looked at her replacement left arm. She then looked at the bed she had been laying on before. Grabbing it, she effortlessly lifted it above her head, then dropped it back on the ground. Four hours ago, she could have barely moved the arm. Now it was like she had been doing it for years.

"What did they do to us?" Mina said. She had looked a medical chart and completely memorized the entire thing in ten seconds. "I don't know how I'm doing this!"

"I like it," Raye said with a smile. She was balancing a chair on her prosthetic finger. _They had to make this stuff out of something strong to do this, but I wouldn't have had the balance to do this even a couple of days ago…_

The door to the room opened, and the girls stopped what they were doing to look (and Raye dropped the chair, much to the embarrassment of herself).

"Hello girls." It was the three "Ks." Kobayashi, normally very stern, was looking very relieved. "Glad to hear…well, see that you are all better."

"Doctor," Amy said, excited but cautiously. "I appreciate all you have done for us, but what exactly have you done to us?"

Kobayashi explained the procedure to them.

"So, we have these microchip thingys in our brains, at the moment," Raye said. "Where can I get more of them?"

"Raye," Amy hissed in disagreement. But part of her was curious…how did these things work?  
"Look, this is all well and good," Serena said. "But you're not going to like, control us?"

"No, they are an independent system not connected to an external network," Kobayashi reassured them. Normally, that would have gotten blank stares from everyone except Amy. But they all nodded in understanding. Even Kobayashi was taken aback for a second, then recovered his composure. "No one is going to be able to "hack" you mind; basically, your brain is like a computer but not connected to the internet." Again, more nodding. Again, more lies.

_Hope this doesn't come back to bite us in the ass, _he thought to himself. Thankfully, Dr. Kawasaki interrupted him with instructions for more training with the girls.

"We're going to do some training now," Kawasaki said. "I think the firearms instructor is downstairs; he'll meet you there."

* * *

The firearms instructor was a retired JSDF Army Master Sergeant, who took this job to get a couple of extra yen with his pension. The girls had trained with him earlier, but they failed even the most basic of all weapon safety and operation. So when they trailed downstairs, he groaned and sat up from his chair, putting down the doujinshi manga that he had gotten from his otaku cousin.

"Back for more?" he asked, voice oozing with sarcasm.

"Absolutely," Serena said, with confidence. "Master…Sergeant Akamatsu." She wasn't going to pull that maid-café shit.

_Whatever,_ Master Sergeant Kouto Akamatsu thought to himself. _You know what, I'm going to have some fun with this._ He went to the armory and brought out six Glock 19s. They were a very compact weapon, or in his words, "Half the calories but all of the taste." He put them on a table, one in front of him and the other five in front of the girls.

"Okay girls," he sneered somewhat, before correcting himself. "This the Glock 19 we trained on last month. As you remember, that didn't go so well." He glared at Mina. She gave him the finger (under the table).

"Number one rule: Weapons are always loaded. Even when they aren't. Number two rule: Never point a weapon at someone or something unless you mean to do serious harm to them. Point weapons away from people when handling them and do not put any bodily appendages over the barrel unless you want to get hurt." He looked at Lita and Raye, who glared back. That was pretty insensitive of him. "Number three rule: Fingers always off triggers unless you are going to fire. And finally, rule number four: know what you're aiming at, and what's behind it as well. There are more rules, of course, but these four always, and I mean, always, must be followed, at all times and all places. So with that in mind, here is how to disassemble this weapon."

_Heh, this always gets them. _Akamatsu with his right hand gripped the slide of the Glock 19 and released the levers on the slide to detach them. The slide came off, with the barrel and spring coming out and making a loud, metallic noise on the table. Quickly as he had disassembled it, he put the barrel in the slide, put the spring in, round end facing toward the front of the weapon, lining it up with the notches in the slide. He put the slide back on the weapon, pulling it back until it clicked, then he charged the weapon with a satisfying "Chah-Chink!" This was done in a matter of seconds. The Glock-19 is not a complex weapon, but if you didn't know what you were doing, then it would be hard.

"See?" he said smugly. He dry fired the weapon (away from the girls and himself) downrange and holstered it. "That's how it's done. Now _you _try it."

_This is gonna be good,_ he thought.

Immediately, the girls picked up the Glock 19s in front of them and copied Akamatsu perfectly. The weapon was stripped and reassembled in ten seconds. The sound of five guns being cocked and dry fired sent chills down Akamatsu's spine.

_Okay…what did I miss?_

"Is that all?" Mina said, somewhat bored. _Maybe they have lasers, yeah, that'll be cool. Like in Fallout 3 or New Vegas. That was a fun game._

"Yeah, got any more guns we can test?" Lita asked.

Stunned, Akamatsu took the Glock 19s back and brought out six M1911s. Again, he showed how to disassemble the weapon. And again, they copied him perfectly, like if they had been doing this for years. Akamatsu took the M1911s back and came out with every pistol in the inventory there: M9s, Sig 226s, Walther P99s, Browning Hi-Powers, and CZ-75s. Same story for all of them.

"Really, this is getting quite boring," Serena said, charging a CZ-75.

"When are we going to get to the 'real' guns?" Amy asked. She had a vague knowledge of assault rifles and submachine guns that a lot of the militaries used in the world, but since the surgery, she started to recall their shape and size, but not their names.

By this point, Akamatsu was speechless. In a span of a month, these girls had gone from unable to handle a pistol properly to completely schooling him on the way a gun could be disassembled.

"I…uh…I…that's all for today girls!" he somehow stammered.

"Aw," Raye sighed. "This was so fun. Are we going to get to the better weapons tomorrow?"

"Yeah, please?" Lita begged.

"Um, sure, yeah, tomorrow, uh-huh," Akamatsu was trying to search for words but nothing was coming out. In all his time with JSDF, he had never seen anything like this.

"Okay, well, if that's all we're going to do today, then I'm going to get some dinner," Serena announced. "I'm with you!" Amy replied excitedly. All this training made her hungry. They all left, leaving Akamatsu alone and wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into.

Making sure that all of the girls had left after that incident, Akamatsu grabbed the phone on his desk (next to the doujinshi) and called Dr. Kobayashi upstairs.  
"Dr. Kobayashi speaking," was the answer.

"This is Akamatsu downstairs," he said, trying not to panic. "Whatever you did with those girls, I've never seen anything like it. They want to get into the heavy stuff now, but I don't even have any of the assault rifles or submachine guns here. And they want to learn, _tomorrow_, all of that stuff."

"We saw the entire thing from up here on camera," Kobayashi replied. "It was certainly impressive." _Not to mention seeing his ego get knocked down a couple of pegs._ "You'll have the weapons by tomorrow."

"Thanks." Akamatsu hung up. _Fuck._

* * *

In the cafeteria, things were just as crazy. Serena, wanting her goddamn doughnuts, barged into the kitchen and declared that she was going to make them along with the other girls. The cafeteria staff was stunned for a second before she tossed them all out.

"Lita, start on the main course. We're doing a Western Style dinner. Amy, Mina, help them. Raye and I will make all the sweet stuff."

Amy snapped some cookbooks off a shelf in the manager's office (much to his chagrin) and within a couple of minutes, she was hard at work, braising some bully beef with a variety of spices. Lita and Mina started in on making dough for the doughnuts and then made polenta. From scratch…by grinding up corn into a coarse flour and then cooking them. From the dough she also made biscuits, American style.

"Why the hell are you making these…biscuit thingies?" Mina asked.

"They looked good in the cookbook," Lita replied, shoving a tray of them into the oven. "You've never heard of biscuits?"

"The only biscuits I take are with my tea," Mina retorted. "Those are more like scones."

"Biscuits are not scones."

From the other side of the kitchen, Raye from one glance at a cookbook, had put together a chicken Caesar salad and was frying the doughnuts. Serena quickly was putting a glaze on them that she had looked up on the internet. Within an hour, they had basically created an odd assortment of French, American South, and Italian cooking. The smell of fried dough, sizzling beef, cooked eggs, sugary glaze and baked biscuits filled the air, and made the staff wonder why they couldn't cook that well.

"Itadakimasu!" They all chanted together, now seated at one of the big tables in the cafeteria. They had somehow lugged all the food out there and set it up buffet style. And in ten minutes, all the food was gone.

"Mmm, that was so good," Serena said. "I haven't had doughnuts like that since ever."

"And we made them!" Amy said. "I didn't know I could cook so well!"

"Me too," Raye chimed in.

"I never got to cook at home," Lita said. "There wasn't enough time."

"So, are you all excited for tomorrow?" Mina chirped. _Everything was so exciting again!_

"Yeah! I can't wait to humiliate that instructor again," Amy smirked. "Did you see his face?"  
"Heh, we showed him," Raye said. "Motherfucker didn't even know what hit him."

They chatted for hours afterward until the cafeteria staff had the courage to come back and kick them out, admonishing them for leaving such a mess in the kitchen.

"See you all tomorrow," Serena waved to everyone as they went back to their rooms, generally excited about life.

"Well, that was interesting." Beryl stepped back from the TV monitor that see had been watching the girls chat idly on. Beryl and Nurse Kuroi were in a security room located on the other side of the complex, out of the way of the girls.

"Is there anything else that you want?" Nurse Kuroi said, barely keeping the annoyance in her voice back. She didn't like her, and Beryl returned the sentiment.

"No…" Beryl replied. "Just…checking in to see how our investment is playing out."

"Investment?" Kuroi scoffed. "You know how the healing solution works, so why come here?"

Beryl just smiled. "That's above your pay grade. Maybe you should mind your own business."

_Fuck off, loser, _Kuroi thought. _Just because I didn't get to go to Todai and end up working for some big company as the CEO's fucktoy, doesn't make me any less of a person._ Kuroi shrugged off the comment and continued to stare at the TV screens, now showing the girls in their rooms. Serena was watching TV, Mina was singing loudly to some J-Pop that she got from "the internet" (read, The Pirate Bay), Lita was cleaning her room obsessively, Amy was reading "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill and Raye was…looking at "special" videos that had "talented" people in them on the internets.

"Well, that'll be all," Beryl said, with that smug smile of hers. "I just had to file a status report for Mr. Yamada." She bowed, again showing off that cleavage.

"Whatever." Kuroi slightly bowed back. She started to stand up but Beryl grabbed her hair.

"I don't think that was very nice," she whispered into Kuroi's ear. "You should bow lower."

Kuroi struggled, but complied.

"That's much better. Have a nice day." Beryl left the room, leaving Kuroi fuming and with a head of messed up hair.

* * *

Amy had put down "On Liberty," and was staring outside. There was a window with a sliding glass door to a balcony, but it was surrounded by bars preventing her from escaping. She had gotten caught up in the day's events, but sometimes at night, she did think of escaping and returning to her mom.

"Gotta stay strong," she said to herself. "Mom raised me by herself. I can do it."

She wondered what the news had said about her and her family after the explosion. In the last month or so, she hadn't had the time to look up the news. Getting onto the computer at her desk, she looked up the Mainichi Shinbun's news article covering the explosions. The article there stated that they had died.

"Well, that makes sense," she said to herself. "If they wanted to keep this secret, then we would have had to have died."

Again, something told her that this was all too convenient, and her gut instinct told her that the whole story wasn't being told to her. Then again, nothing made much sense anymore. She would tell these facts to Dr. Kobayashi and the rest of the team tomorrow. Maybe sleep would make everything better.

Amy turned off the lights in the room and let her mind drift off to sleep.

* * *

"Oh god, that felt so good," Raye said out loud. She finished washing off in the shower after her computer session. Raye was certainly excited to have new appendages on her hands, that's for sure. It had been difficult eating, opening doors and writing stuff, but now everything would be better.

She was generally excited for tomorrow. _I can learn how to kill stuff to death, even better!_

With no hint of irony, she prayed before going to bed.

* * *

With her room finally cleaner than clean, Lita was satisfied with her work. She winced in pain sometimes, her stupid prosthetic arm reminding her that she had lost something…well, at least it wasn't like she was trying to bring back her dead mother or something like that. Not that I wouldn't try, Lita bitterly thought to herself.

She wondered what the future would bring though for her and the rest of them. Noting the time, she opened up a drawer with some pills that Dr. Kobayashi prescribed for her condition, and took them.

* * *

Mina was screaming at the top of lungs "Baby! Baby! Baby!" by AKB48. She wished that she could be an idol as well, but oh well. Maybe in the next life she would lead. Tired out by all that singing, she turned off her computer and plopped into bed.

* * *

Serena was on her balcony staring at the moon. From the time she was little, she had always stared at it, like she belonged there. She even thought that she was a princess there and that Mamoru/Darien was her prince. _Hah! What a joke he turned out to be when he moved to America._ She had asked him for a stronger commitment to their love life, but he pulled away. Soon after, his family moved away, to that far off land of California, United States of America. She still missed him, every day.

_Get your mind of him, Serena._ She sighed. _Time to start anew._


	14. Chapter XII: Guns of the Patriots

**Chapter XII: Guns of the Patriots.**

**0700hrs, 23 July 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties." Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract._

_"Nipah, motherfucker." Rika Furude, Higurashi Parody Fandub_

* * *

In the two weeks following the surgery, things has progressed at breakneck speed. In an hour, they had learned how to assemble and dissemble Howa Type 64s and 89s, M16A4s, M4A1s, AK47s, AK74s, AKMs, PK and PKM machine guns, M60s, M240s, M249s, FN-FALs, L85s, G36s, MP5s…the list went on and on. In a day, they had learned how to fire all the weapons and had started using basic infantry tactics on a kill house that had been set up by Akamatsu. The best time he had in clearing out (with a team, of course) the place was one minute, twenty seconds. They did it in fifty.

In a week, the girls had memorized the entirety of the _US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual _and were working on advanced tactics, from clearing a house with multiple entry points, lock picking, pickpocketing, disabling a tank with improvised explosives, precision sniping, aggressive driving tactics, calling in airstrikes and artillery strikes, use of crew-served weapons, use of explosives, and use of said artillery. They had learned first aid, and then advanced medical care, even practicing some limited surgery and incisions on some dummies such as tracheotomies, removal of foreign objects from the body and the severing of afflicted limbs (this freaked Lita and Serena out, so they didn't do that). Amy was especially good at this part.

In two weeks, they had learned the use of anti-tank weaponry, police and military rules of engagement (for all different situations), analysis of intelligence, tailing cars, planting bugs, social engineering, several branches of political philosophy from the Democratic, Monarchic, Socialist, Autocratic, and Authoritative perspective, including (but not limited to), John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Emma Goldman, and others. Foreign languages were still hard though, and everyone struggled through even the most basic of English phrases. The one person who had the least amount of trouble, was surprisingly, Mina. Amy was close behind, but Mina seemed to fluently speak it in no time, chatting incessantly with some person in America that she randomly called up one day. Despite the standardized curriculum, her English was the British type, rather than the Americanized variant that Amy spoke, leading to some confusion over whether "to table" something at meeting. Mina insisted that the new menu items on the cafeteria menu needed to be tabled immediately, where Amy thought that they shouldn't be tabled at all. It was only after a search on the internet pointed out that both Mina and Amy were correct in their thinking, just that they were using different definitions for the same word.

The girls had begun to specialize as well, with each team member taking on different roles in the combat unit.

Raye had picked up a flamethrower used in the Vietnam War and had almost burned down the practice range that Akamatsu had set up outside (the burning was passed off as a small brush fire). Laughing with glee, she then proceeded to torch two hundred square meters of forest, to which she was admonished harshly (this was barely passed off as a brush fire…again). After that, she was told to put the flamethrower away and to only use when ordered. She then proceeded to (out of boredom) 1. Blow up Akamatsu's prized BMW with a claymore 2. Destroy a ski cabin at the resort down the road from them with an AT4 and 3. Cause an avalanche on the nearby mountain by detonating some C4 by accident. They gave the flamethrower back.

Lita became the only person to use less than lethal weaponry, carrying a Taser around for those snatch and grab missions, or in case they just didn't want to kill someone ("Why would you not want to do that?" asked Raye.) She learned martial arts from Youtube, focusing mostly on Krav Magra in taking down targets and unarmed combat. This lead to Akamatsu being tossed around like a rag doll during CQB training, until he could no longer get up and fight and many a comparison to Full Metal Alchemist ("But it's my left arm, not my right!" she protested). She also had a ballistic shield when needed, as she was the first one in when breaching a room.

Amy, as always, was the brains of the group. She had very little weaponry (although she did know how to use assault rifles and such), but carried a small recon drone (a RQ-11 Raven), a Toughbook, and other technological devices that would aid in their fight in both cyberspace and in the field. And with computers, came the ability to manipulate data and to compromise data security. At first, she learned Linux, starting with Ubuntu and Debian, moving to Redhat and other Linux based server operating systems. Command line was easy, starting with the commands man, touch, mkdir, kill, adduser, sudo, su, passwd, ls, ls-l, cd, ps, ps-l and then moving to looking at specific programs within in the Linux system to manipulate. Hacking merely consists of the right tools (most of them as freeware), a lot of patience, and the willingness to break into a system. In two days, she successfully broke into the JSDF's database regarding North Korea and China, the Chinese Defense Minister's private email account, and the US Ambassador's communiques with Washington.

Mina was the suave one. Getting into or out of a situation was just the right word here, an ego stroke there, looking like someone who was completely lost, and you had money, passwords, data, you name it. One day after training, she was bored. So she called the secretary at Kantei, asking for the Prime Minister. She posed as an "external" contact of the PM, and eventually cajoled her way to the Chief of Staff. She sobbed to the COS that she was the daughter of a certain DPJ member and that she needed to talk to him after some "domestic" trouble. Finally, the PM came on the line and Mina told him who she was, much to his surprise (he remembered who she was). They ended up talking about baseball for ten minutes or so, then she said goodbye and hung up.

Serena was the all-rounder. Not as tech savvy as Amy, not as CQB focused as Lita, definitely not as suave as Mina, and not as violent as Raye. But she was the person that coordinated everyone, getting the info from Amy and Mina, softening up the enemy with Raye and closing in with Lita. Working tandem, they were able (in theory) to defeat a force ten, twenty, thirty, possibly up to one hundred times their size by defeating them in detail, using mobility to nullify the strength in numbers, and just having more technology available to kill more things. That was the entire point of SAILOR; operate with tactical impunity and get the job done.

* * *

It was at this point that the JSDF brass were becoming involved. Since SAILOR had progressed so fast, they were impressed by the project and had come down to the medical facility where they were training. Officially, this was a JSDF owned area, so the explosions could be forgiven…mostly. There was some stuff (i.e, Raye) that had to be covered up, but for the most part, the locals left them alone. Memories of the 2011 tsunami still in their minds, they didn't want to get on the bad side of the JSDF. Today, General Ishimura, Chief of Staff for the Air Self Defense Force, came down for a little visit. He pulled up in a limousine outside the facility, surrounded by several Jeeps and SUVs. The three "Ks" were there to greet him.

"General Ishimura," Kobayashi said to him, bowing politely as Ishimura got out of the limousine. "We were not expecting you today."

General Ishimura curtly bowed back; he was higher ranking after all. But he did owe the famous doctor in front of him some respect. "I heard the progress from a…contact (read, Akamatsu). I want to see them for myself."

"Of course, General," Kobayashi responded.

The four of them walked through the facility, with Dr. Kobayashi pointing out all of the trapping of this medical facility.

"This here is our dining hall," he pointed out.

"Looks quite big for just five people," Ishimura said to him.

"There are other people here, General," Nurse Kuroi interrupted. Kawasaki gave her a dirty look, but the General was intrigued.

"What other personnel are there here?"

"Well, there's about thirty or so medical staff, from orderlies who also double as janitors, nurses such as myself, and doctors. In addition, there's about forty or so security personnel around here," she stated.

"That seems like a lot of security for a small place such as this."

"We need to keep prying eyes out," was the response from Kuroi.

"It's a prudent, and necessary step, General," Dr. Kawasaki interrupted.

"I wasn't questioning the need for the security force," Ishimura said back. "I'm sure such steps are needed for a project as secret as this one."

"Anyway…I don't know the specifics on the security people here," Kuroi was hesitant now. "…who's the head of security here?"  
Kobayashi had the answer. "It's Kuraudo Ooishi. He's a former Tokyo Met officer, with some anti-Yakuza operations under his belt."

"Most of the security people from the Met?" the General asked.

"Some. A lot of them are ex-local or state police officers. That's all we need."

"No JSDF?"

"Sorry General," Kobayashi said sheepishly. "They keep getting picked up by the PMCs and all of those companies. We just can't compete with them, so we're stuck with what we get. We can't use official security forces, or companies, so we have to do almost everything in house."

General Ishimura shrugged. "Well, at least you have a good sized budget."

"Very much so," Kobayashi replied. "Anyway, shall we continue to the kill house?"

* * *

They walked down to the kill house that Akamatsu was resetting…again after the girls had blasted through it.

"Mr. Akamatsu," Kobayashi said. "How did the girls do today on the course?"

Akamatsu rolled his eyes. "They're down to forty five seconds, the entire house." The kill house was nothing more than a bunch of tires placed so that they formed simulated rooms, in which targets (or innocent civilians) could be places. It was the job of the entry team to clear out the entire building. The layout of the building was pretty simple; the team would go through basically a loop anticlockwise around a simulated house, with several rooms and hallways to be cleared out.

Some teams took longer than others, while every time that the girls went to the kill house, they set a new record.

"Impressive," Ishimura said. "Can we see them in action?"

"Of course." Kobayashi sent Nurse Kuroi to get the girls, who were finishing up breakfast. They came back down in five minutes, wondering what was going on.

"Hey, doctor person," Serena said to Kobayashi. "Why are we back down here? We just did this kill house."

"Well, do it again," Akamatsu snapped. "This is _General_ Ishimura, Chief of Staff for the Air Self Defense Force. He was interested in your progress, and I think it would be better for all of us if you ran the course again."

Serena glared at Akamatsu. "Fine, we'll run the course again."

A couple minutes later, they were all suited up and ready to go. Lita was in first, with the ballistic shield and the Glock 19 from before, with a MP5A3 slung behind her. Raye was right behind her, with a M4A1 carbine and a shortened Mossburg 500 shotgun slung over her shoulder. Amy also had that Glock 19, with a tactical vest. Mina carried a compact MP5-PDW, and Serena brought up the rear with a M4 Carbine Close Quarters Battle Receiver, a very compact and shortened down version of the M4A1 (yes, such a thing is possible).

They stacked up at the entrance to the kill house. Lita and Raye were on the left side of the entrance, and Amy, Mina and Serena were on the right side.  
"Okay, ready?" Akamatsu yelled. He had a stopwatch in hand, ready to begin.

"Yeah, we're ready," Lita replied.

"And…go!"

Amy tossed in a flashbang, which detonated. Lita and Raye shuffled in the entrance and cleared the left side of the room. Right behind them, Amy and Mina cleared the right side. No targets.

"Clear!" Lita yelled.

"Clear!" Mina said.

"Next area guys," Serena ordered. Again, Amy tossed a flashbang in the hallway and they charged in. This time, there were targets that popped up. Two civilian, two hostiles.

"Contact!" Raye snapped her M4 up and looked down the red dot sight. Bang. Bang. Two headshots. Two scared shitless civilians.

In this hallway, there were three rooms, two on the left and one on the right (this was excluding the room they had just come out of). Quickly moving, the team split up, with Lita and Raye taking the rooms on the left and the rest of the team on the right.

"Go!" Serena, again, ordered. Two flashbangs, and then the two elements barged in their designated rooms.

The rooms on the left were connected with each other, which made it somewhat easier to keep moving. Lita went in first, of course, and snapped two shots off at a target on the right. Raye took down two more on the left.

"Nice work," she commented on Lita's shooting. "Next room."

There were two civilians and four hostiles in this one. No problem. Eight shots later, the tangos all had holes in them.

"Clear!"

On the right, there were a shit ton of targets. The room was supposed to represent a kitchen or something like that. Five hostiles, but no civvies. Amy took aim…one…two…three shots. Two targets.

Mina switched to burst and depressed the trigger twice. Six shots. Three Targets.

"Clear!"

The rest of the kill house was secured in no time.

At the end of the kill house, the girls piled out in a "V" formation, weapons on safe and unloaded.

"How did we do?" Serena asked. She was sweating, from the exertion, yes, but from also nervousness about being watched by some of the top brass in JSDF.

"Well, you did it in…" Akamatsu deliberately paused for dramatic tension but continued when General Ishimura shot him a glare.

"…forty…flat."

There was a gasp from everyone. "Forty seconds!" Lita exclaimed. "That's five better than we did earlier this morning!"

"God, we're just that good," Raye said with a smirk.

"How about that," Serena said to Akamatsu, who looked away.

"What was their time last week?" Ishimura asked Akamatsu.

"It was…" he sighed. "It was fifty seconds."

"So in the course of a week, they've beaten your time by thirty seconds, and then moved their lead up by ten. This progress is remarkable."

"Yes sir," was the only reply Akamatsu could give the General.

"I think that this program is coming along swimmingly," the General continued. "I'm so glad you've been training them well." He clapped Akamatsu on the back. Unfortunately, he was still sore from the beating that Lita gave him, and he winced at the General's compliment.

* * *

After the kill house, Ishimura met them all in the large conference room for the debriefing.

"Girls, I am very impressed by the progress you have made here," he said. "I think that after just a little bit more training, we can release you into the real world, to do some good."

He turned to the three "Ks". "Doctors, Nurse. I am very impressed by the way you have handled yourselves here, especially when it came to mending these fine people."

"Thank you General," Kawasaki said, bowing.

"Well, with that, I think we have one more thing to clear up before starting in on the most intense part of training," Ishimura said.

"What would that be?" Serena asked.

"It's kind of a silly thing, but since you're going to be out in the field, we can't call you by your real names. Therefore, we use callsigns to refer to people and objectives to simplify the mission logistics and communication." " I was thinking…well…what kind of callsign would you like use?" General Ishimura asked. "It should be SAILOR, which is this program, with a suffix attached to it. It would only be right to have you come up with your own designation."

Everyone thought about it for a second.

Amy had remembered from a book she had been reading about astrology, and the power that each planet represented. The Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.

"Why not Earth?" Ishimura asked.

She shrugged. "Just because. Kind of obvious…it gives it a more exotic feel."

"Okay then…who's who?"

Amy thought for a second. "Well, I'm kind of like Mercury; curious, inquisitive, and I like to take things apart and put them back together again. Serena is like the Moon, "Emotional." Serena rolled her eyes, but it was true. "But caring, feeling, looking out for others, making sure everything is okay."

_That's true,_ SAILOR Moon thought.

"What about me?" Raye asked.

"You're Mars, hands down. Fiery, confident, aggressive, energy, and strength. Lita, I'm to getting you."

Lita looked at her, with a smile. "You would be Jupiter. Growth…" Everyone laughed at that. She was tall, and…well…."talented" in more ways than one. "Expansion, prosperity and good fortune."

"That's me, of course." SAILOR Jupiter beamed with pride.

Mina was last, but not least. "Well, knowing you and your, well, escapades…" Mina blushed. She had a new boyfriend every week it seemed like when they were still in school. "You're Venus. Passion, love, feelings, affections, understanding of other people, and communication with others." Mina nodded in approval.

"So, that will be your callsigns then," General Ishimura said. _Not the ones I would have come up with, but they will have to do._ "SAILOR Moon, SAILOR Mars, SAILOR Mercury, SAILOR Jupiter, and SAILOR Venus."

"Present and accounted for," Mercury said. All of the SAILORs came to attention, and saluted smartly. General Ishimura returned the salute.

"Okay girls, time for your first training mission," Kawasaki interrupted. Ishimura glared at him. "I mean, all SAILOR units are to report for training," he stuttered.

All the members of SAILOR-SF were assembled and ready for their first training mission, which was remarkable considering the state they had been in only two months ago. Their broken bodies healed, limbs replaced, intelligence increased, and the sheer variety of skills that had been learned. It was beyond a miracle what had happened here, at the "Top Secret" Medical Facility.

They were taken downstairs to the basement ("Again?" Mina complained), where they led to the same room that they had undergone the fluid treatment. Instead of being filled with medical equipment however, the room had completely changed from the last time they had seen it.

* * *

"What are these things?" Amy asked. They were like the ones that they had undergone the fluid treatment, but instead of liquid, there was much more equipment there. Huge servers, mainframes and assorted electronic equipment led up to the chambers, now with swing-out doors. Inside of the containers was a small seat, with wires and tubes everywhere.

"These are the VR simulators," Kobayashi said. "Virtual Reality. We can do some of the more advanced stuff in here. You'll be better prepared for combat after you use these things."

"I don't know…" Amy was skeptical. "Maybe I've played too many video games, but I don't like where this heading."

"Oh come on," Kawasaki said. "This is nothing like the MGS series."

"Or _Heavy Rain_," Mina added. Everyone looked at her.

"You played _Heavy Rain?_" Amy asked, disbelieving. "I didn't think you had the patience."

"Well, I did. It was a big shock when I found that the Origami killer was…"

"Shut up Mina," Raye hissed. "Spoilers."

"Right…" Kawasaki continued. "Anyway, it's safe. Really, I've done it before, and it's really cool."

"Oh, if you've done it, then we're okay," Serena said, somewhat sarcastically. "Fine, I call center one."

After a quick argument among the SAILORs about which chamber belonged to whom, they climbed in and fastened the straps on the seats. The techs and orderlies then attached monitoring equipment to them, just in case something when wrong. They then set about prepping the girls for the simulation, which took about thirty minutes since this was their first time in the machines.

"Ready?" Kawasaki asked.

"Ready," came the reply from everyone.

Dr. Kawasaki nodded to a tech, who activated the sequence to start the simulation. The lids closed, and the girls saw darkness.


	15. Chapter XIII: E Maka'ala Kakou

**Chapter XIII: E Maka'ala Kakou**

**?hrs, ? ? ?, Simulated Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States**

* * *

_"We the warriors born to live, On what the land and sea can give, Defend our birthright to be free  
Give our children liberty." Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, E Ala E._

* * *

The hot sun beating down on the SAILOR team blinded them for a second. Once their vision had corrected itself, they looked around to see where they were. They were on a street corner, but there were no cars or people in it yet. A large hotel complex sprawled before them, with a parking garage on the left separated by a road. A Sushi place was on their extreme left, and a coffee shop on their extreme right.

"Are…are we in Hawai'i?" Serena asked.

"It appears so," Amy replied. "Nice jeans." She noted Raye's appearance.

"Thanks." They were all wearing fairly casual clothing, jeans and t-shirts for the most part.

"Why are we all wearing sunglasses?" Mina wondered. A voice in their ear quickly changed that.

"Hi girls." An image flashed up on their glasses, surprising them. "This is Dr. Kobayashi."  
"Yeah, I got that part," Raye snorted.

"This is our communication from the outside world to you all. Normally, you would have on eyepieces and this would be a commanding officer or something to that extent. But since this is both a simulated covert operation and your first time out, this is a review of the stuff that will be available to you in the field."

"What do these glasses do exactly?" Serena asked, looking around.

"They use a special millimetric wave system that allows you to scan the area and identify targets, friendlies, civilians, and mission objectives. Let me show you an example."

Kobayashi activated a scan on Serena's glasses.

"Whoa!" Amy, Mina, Lita and Raye all popped on the HUD, marked in green as friendly.

"So, do all of our…what are these things called?"

"It's a Heads up Display, or HUD, with liquid crystal display, providing an augmented reality experience that helps to effectively distinguish combatants and improve combat effectiveness."

"Thanks, Billy Mayes," Mina muttered.

"Didn't the US Army try something out like this with Land Warrior?" Amy asked, Kobayashi, fiddling with the glasses. She sent out another scan, which displayed more information about the buildings around them.

"Yes, but the project was abandoned in 2007," Kobayashi said. "But they integrated some of the findings of that program into their Future Force Warrior scheme, which has some of the technology you are going to use."

"That's great and all," Raye interrupted. "But can we get started?"

"Of course," Kobayashi said.

"Okay, so what's our mission?" Amy asked, irritated at Raye. She wanted to know more about the HUDs.

"Here is your objective," Kobayashi shuffled through some papers. "I'm sending it to your HUD…now."

Information started flowing the team immediately.

"So…there is a terrorist group planning to attack Japanese citizens abroad, as well as any off duty military personnel," Amy read from a dossier. "They have infiltrated this area and are planning to attack somewhere in this district. Their numbers and weaponry are unknown. Exercise extreme caution. Neutralize the targets by any means."

There was a pause before anyone spoke up.

"That's it?" Mina asked.

"Sometimes that's all you have in the field," Kobayashi stated. "I'm uploading the weapons loadout for what you would usually have in this sort of covert operation."

A large handbag appeared on Raye's right shoulder. "Whoa!" she said in surprise. She checked inside it. An MP7A1 lay in there, with some ammunition and a wallet with a Honolulu Police badge in it.

"Cool. But I guess I won't have to use it unless I have to, right?"

"Yes," Kobayashi replied.

The other girls got purses and smaller handbags; Mina and Amy got a very compact Glock 26 stuffed in their purses, Lita got a slightly larger M1911, and Serena had a Beretta 92 Compact.

"I guess waving around huge assault rifles isn't the best way to go about apprehending terrorists," Serena said. "Can we change the loadout, if we want?"

"You can…but again, in a real life situation, that might not be possible."

"I would prefer something a lot bigger," Raye said. "But I get it."

"Alright team," Kobayashi said. "I'm going to start the exercise…now."

In a second, the street was populated with cars, motorbikes, buses, and of course, people.

"Wow, that was cool," Mina said.

"First things first," Serena said. "Where the hell exactly are?"

"On it." Amy touched her glasses and they did a scan of the area.

"Okay, that big building complex over there on the right is a really big hotel," she stated. "3,386 rooms."

"That's really big," Serena redundantly replied. "How many Japanese nationals there?"

"Five hundred, at the moment."

Raye whistled. "That's a pretty big target."

"You're telling me." Serena noted a smaller hotel complex behind the hotel that Amy pointed out.. "What's that over there?" she asked Amy.

"Standby…oh wow."

"What is it?" Lita asked.

"It's another hotel, but it's a little bit different than the last one. It's run by the US government, and only certain people can visit there. 817 rooms, unknown amount of people there at present."

"Those are two very big targets," Mina said. "How are we going to defend them all?"

"We're going on the attack then," Serena responded. "Mina, Amy, you speak pretty good English, right?"

"Yes, I do," Mina replied, in English.

"Ah, well, um," Amy stuttered. "Kind of."

"Okay, here's the plan." Serena transmitted a map of the area to them. "There's park right by the parking garage, I want Lita go over there and watch for anything suspicious. Walk around, look at cars, trucks, anyone walking funny, that sort of stuff. Mina and Amy, go over to that, hotel over there, the one run by the government, and we'll take the other one. Okay? Raye, you're with me."

With that, they split up.

* * *

The hotel that Amy and Mina were going too was a very ugly looking hotel, with a drab shade of concrete gray (not fifty shades, they were too cheap to provide for that many varieties) covering all the buildings. There wasn't too much security, but there was a guard shack on the short curved road leading up to the hotel. Mina and Amy walked up the path to the hotel, the police officer on duty noticed them. Sometimes prostitutes would come up to the hotel, but that had stopped after a particularly nasty incident involving chopsticks, superglue and papaya. These two didn't seem like that sort of material though.

"Hey, what are you all doing here?" the officer asked, more out of curiosity than security precautions. Mina and Amy looked at each other, then approached the guardhouse.

"We're looking for something," Mina said, flashing her badge from her purse. Amy did the same.

"Oh, sorry Sergeant," the officer replied. "What can I help you with?"

"Well," Amy said. She had to pause and think about what she was going to say. "Have you seen anything suspicious today?"

"Nah, just the usual crowd. Why? Something going down?"

"It's just that," Mina began. Amy looked at her, but let her continue. "Well, we got a tip from someone that there might be a possible terrorist cell in the area and that they were going to attack here or the hotel next door."

"Damn," the officer said. "Did you tell the Military Police about it?"

"The Military Police have been alerted," Mina bluffed. "But this might be pretty big. Anything at all officer, that you can remember can be helpful."  
"Okay, uh…" The program running the officer's personality searched the databank for the something that might be of use. The attack itself had already been set, but some things could be changed if the SAILORs asked the right questions. "Wait, wait a second. I let in a band today, but they weren't on the white list until just yesterday. They were a replacement band for the people who were going perform today but they got sick."

"Where do bands usually perform?" Mina asked.

"A band like this? Uh, maybe in the courtyard, by the banyan tree, but for all I know, they could be in one of the restaurants, maybe by the outdoor luau. Talk to the people at the front desk about that."

"Thanks officer." Mina and Amy walked quickly away. The officer was a bit suspicious, so he called dispatch to see if there were two detectives in the area. Dispatch confirmed, as well as the terror alert in the area due to the fact that their database had been compromised by Amy. Satisfied, the officer checked his sidearm and sat up in his chair, ready for anything.

* * *

Lita pretended to jog (well, she actually jogged but that wasn't why she was there) in the park right across from the hotel Amy and Mina were staking out. She looked around for anything at all that might be conducive to a terrorist attack. There really wasn't anything though. Children were playing in the park, people exercising, laughing, and enjoying themselves.

_This is getting me nowhere,_ she thought to herself. _Gotta find a better place to see stuff from._

The parking garage beckoned for her to come in. _Fine._

Lita entered the garage and headed up three stories up, to the top of the garage. She went to the around, looking for anything suspicious in the surrounding area.

But again, nothing. She scanned with the glasses, bringing up a map.

"A church on the north side of the park," she said to herself. "…a police checkpoint…a post office on the east side…and…what's this then?" She looked a building right next to the parking garage. It looked pretty important, with sliding glass doors and a very modern exterior.

_That might be secondary target or something,_ she thought. She still hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary though. _Maybe this is just a waste of time._

Lita turned around to leave, but saw the answer that she had been looking for.

_Shit, it was right behind me all the while_.

Four identically white Ford E-Series vans were parked next to each other. That was one hell of a coincidence, or something was up. She started to approach one of the vans, but the doors opened up and five men piled out. Lita ducked behind some cars and tried to spy in on them.

"This is going to be so big," she heard one of them say. "And we're going to be stuck plinking targets this think tank here."

"Shut the fuck up, we get to kill people," another said. "What's the progress on the others?"

"Two teams are inside the hotel complex lobby, and one inside the lobby next to it. All we need to do is get in position and start firing, then they go."

"Easy as pie. I always wanted to be in a band, but oh well."

_That's how they're masking their movements,_ Lita concluded. _Bands carry around lots of equipment, so it's easy to hide large weapons in those instrument cases and such._

She touched her glasses and send out a message via text to everyone else.

* * *

"Are you getting this?" Raye said to Serena.

"Yeah. So we're looking for a very large band then, about ten people."

"Ten? We're completely out numbered. I like those odds," Raye smirked.

"That may be true, but I don't want to start a firefight in the lobby," Serena said. "If only we could get them isolated…"

She looked around. They were standing in one of the many shopping areas in the hotel complex. A crowded ABC store bustled with activity next to them.

"We have to try to get them alone. I'm going to try to access the entertainment database in the hotel, see if anything suspicious comes up."

Serena tried to hack into the database, but the hotel wasn't that stupid. It wasn't located on the internet and had to be accessed via one of the computers in the hotel, specifically, the check-in desk, security, or an employee's office computer.

"Shit. Raye, let's get to the check-in desk."

They jogged over to the check-in desk. There were hundreds of people there, walking to and from their hotel rooms, going to the bar, the pool, to the stores, checking in, checking out…and there was the band, all ten of them, standing by the drop-off point by the road. It was going to be impossible not to have collateral damage if a firefight broke out in here.

"Serena," Raye said, but Serena saw them too.

"I see them. Don't do anything stupid." Raye just glared, but Serena was right. "These might be the guys, or maybe not."

"Serena," a voice came over the "glasses" network. "Serena, it's Lita. I'm following the guys on the parking garage to the think tank. These guys are getting ready to roll, you have to find the other terrorists."

"I know, I know, we have a possible lead." Serena was looking around for something to distract them. She came up with an idea.

"Raye, I'm going to bug them for an autograph, try to get into one of their bags and see if these are the guys. Go."

Serena walked up to one of the "band" members and pulled a sheet of newspaper out of her purse.

"Ah…hi…I see your band," she said in very broken English. "It…it…very good. Sign…please."  
"Oh…" The band member was suspicious immediately because this was just a cover, but maybe the girl was mistaking them for another band. No reason to attract attention. He signed the newspaper.

Raye sneaked up on the baggage that some of the band members were standing around. She pretended to trip.

"Ow!" she exclaimed, falling down on a duffle bag.

Clunck. She struggled to get up, in the process unzipping the bag a little.

An AK47 stared back at her.

"Hey, get out of there!" one of the band said.

"Sorry, sorry." Raye zipped the bag up and picked herself up.

"Get out of here missy," the band member said, shoving her aside.

Raye staggered off. Serena had finished bugging the other band member and quickly walked away, joining up with Raye near a support column out of sight of the band.

"It's them," Raye hissed to her.

"Fuck. What do we do?"

"I don't know if we can get these guys in a secluded place," Raye replied. "My opinion? Confront them here and hope they give up. If not, I mow them all down with the MP7 in here." Serena glanced over at the band. They were all packed together…

"And if this turns into a full scale firefight?"

Raye shrugged. "Hope it doesn't come down to that."

Serena looked back. The men were starting to get antsy, pacing about and checking their watches and cellphones.

"I'm going to call the police in," she said.

"Why are you…?" Raye began.

"Just in case. They can back us up…maybe." She dialed 911.

"911 Emergency, please state the nature of your situation."

"Yeah, I'm at this hotel here," Serena said, rattling off the name ",and I just saw these guys with big guns in the lobby, I don't know what's going on, I think you should send somebody to check it…"

She heard gunfire in the distance. The men perked up and started to unzip the instrument cases and duffle bags.

"Oh shit, Serena!" Raye pulled the MP7 out of her purse and screamed at the bad guys now.

"Freeze, police!"

One of the men snapped an AK47 up and started firing.

* * *

Lita had trailed the five man team down the stairs and to the street, where they walked to the entrance of the fancy building that looked important.

_I have to do something now or else this is not going to end well_.

She checked her weapon. Five against one.

_No sweat Lita, just like the kill house._ She looked at the street. Nobody was around…

Walking about twenty-five feet behind them, she pulled out the badge in her purse and screamed in a loud voice:

"POLICE! STOP WHERE YOU ARE!" (in Japanese).

Big mistake.

Three of the men swiveled around, Mini-Uzis in hand, and started blasting away.

"Fuck!" Lita ducked behind one of the cars in the street. She leaned to the left and snapped three shots off, hitting one of the men.

_Yeah, have a nice nap, sucker._

But he got back up. He was holding his chest though.

_What?! I totally nailed the guy…unless..._

Lita called everyone else on the radio built into her glasses. "They have body armor!" she screamed, firing off four more shots before having to reload. Another man went down, killed by a lucky shot to the head. The other two men, having heard the gunshots tried to charge into the building but was locked out by the security team, having heard the gunfire outside.

* * *

"What was that?" Mina asked. "I didn't catch what she said."

"I don't know, but we have to hurry!" Amy said. They had asked the concierge where that particular band was playing and it turned out to be near the banyan tree. The tree itself was huge, with branches everywhere and could have encompassed two or three good sized houses by itself. It was surrounded by a long concrete bench, with several stores and a restaurant nearby.

The tree was on the basement floor, while the front desk was on the first floor.

Something like firecrackers were going off in the distance though…

"I see them!" Mina exclaimed. Five guys, with big instrument cases and duffel bags.

"Yep, that's them," Amy said. "Stop where you are!" She was a bit too soft on that, and no one heard her.

"Oh for crying out loud," Mina griped. "YO BITCHES, POLICE! STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"

Amy and Mina were on a staircase leading down the basement level when Mina screamed at the band.

Having been discovered, they started pulling out their guns.

"No you don't!" Mina yelled. She brought her Glock 26 to bear and pulled the trigger.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! Two guys flinched, but they got back up and pulled out AK-47s.

"Shit!" Amy brought her weapon to bear and fired off three more rounds, center of mass. Again, no effect.

"Fuck, that's what Lita was on about!" Mina said. "They have armor!"

It was chaos in the hotel now. People were running around on the first floor, trying to get away. The front desk people had already alerted the police and the security team.

"Dammit, go down!" Mina fired off three more shots. Both she and Amy were advancing down the stairs, firing as they went into the group of men.

They smartened up and spread out, firing into the nearby restaurant and at Venus and Mercury. It wasn't packed in the restaurant, but there were people there…

"Fucking die already!" Mina kept firing, aiming for the head. One of the men went down. Amy got one too. "About time!"

Then, a burst of AK47 fire clipped Amy. She went down.

"I'm hit!" She said. It was a graze, but there was blood.

"Amy!" SAILOR Venus screamed. "You'll fucking pay!"

SAILOR Venus reloaded and dashed forward, with SAILOR Mercury trying to keep up.

Another man went down, hit by Venus' fire. The other two, seeing that things were going south despite their advantage, gave up.

"Don't shoot!" one of them said. He put down his AK47. So did the other one.

"Keep your hands where I can see them!" Amy yelled, blood streaming down her face.

The security team from the hotel finally showed up (although they would have had a tough time as well, they were only armed with M9 pistols) along with some police officers. Some paramedics were right behind them.

"Over here!" Mina yelled.

The security team and the police officers took over, handcuffing the suspects and searching them.

"Hey." Someone tapped Amy on the shoulder. She was holding a bandage on her head now, from one of the EMTs. "Who exactly are you?" It was the police officer from the guard shack.

"Well, we're detectives…" Mina began, but the officer cut her off.

"I don't think so. Who are you really?"

Amy and Mina looked at each other sheepishly, and shrugged.

"It's above your pay grade," Amy replied. "We're the good guys, that's all we can say."

"Okay then…" was the reply from the officer.

"And we were never here, officer," Mina added. With that, they hurried off to help the other teams.

* * *

"Goddamit!" SAILOR Moon cried out. Both Serena and Raye were still hiding behind a support column as chaos reigned around them.

In the first two seconds of the firefight, SAILOR Mars had fired the entire twenty round clip of the MP7 into the group of terrorists. Six went down in the hail of bullets, but the other four had scrambled away, firing indiscriminately into the crowd of people in the lobby.

SAILOR Moon fired her Beretta but only managed to annoy the terrorists.

"Come on Raye, what's the hold up?!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Raye shoved a new magazine into the gun and charged it. "Ready!"

"Go!"

They rushed out from the column and made a run for another support column closer to the front desk.

"Gotcha!" Raye shouted. She sighed down the gun and snapped off one…two…three bursts. Three down bad guys down, one to go.

"Where's the other one?!" Serena yelled.

There was some gunfire further into the hotel.

"Shit, move!"

SAILOR Moon and Mars hustled to where the gunfire was coming from. A gaggle of Japanese tourists ran screaming away from a bunch of shops. They stacked up on a corner, and SAILOR Mars took a peek.

"Oh Christ," she said (ironically). Several civvies lay dead on the ground while a whole bunch more were injured. The shooter was reloading his AK47 and…what was that…?

"He's got a grenade!" Mars rounded the corner and fired. The last shooter went down, hard.

"Check him," Serena said. They approached, carefully.

Suddenly, he popped back up and fired a burst straight at Serena's legs.

"OW!" She fell down. Mars put him down for good with a burst.

"You okay?" Raye asked.

"I'm fine," Serena said. "Thank god for prosthetics."

"Hey, I could use some help here!" Lita was still in trouble.

"Come on," Raye said, helping Serena back up. "Let's finish this."

SAILOR Jupiter had barely made any progress. Four Mini-Uzis pounded her position and what little fire she could return didn't really do much.

"Guys, could use some help! Could use it now!"

"Hold on, we're crossing the street now, we see you!" Amy and Mina were running at full tilt, dodging cars and fleeing citizens.

"Amy, get the guy on the left! I got right!" Mina said.

"Got it!" Amy highlighted the position of the terrorists to everyone.

"Well, thank you Mercury," Lita muttered to herself. She could see where the terrorists were now, and she fired blindly in the general direction of them. At least she was doing something.

Amy fired off a couple of shots, but again, they didn't really do much. There was a chatter of bullets now as the four remaining men fired at everything that moved. The security guards in the building couldn't do much, Lita was pinned down and Amy and Mina were doing scratch damage.

"Coming up on your six!" SAILOR Mars yelled on the radio. "Engaging!"

A few well-placed shots from Mars downed one of them.

"Come on!" SAILOR Moon yelled. "Get them!"

Five guns trained down range. Five guns fired, hitting the exposed parts that the armor didn't cover and killing all but one of the terrorists.

"Cover!" Serena yelled. She motioned to Amy to follow her. The terrorist was on the ground, writhing in pain. He tried to reach for the Uzi but Amy kicked it away.

"Not so fast," she said. "Who are you?"

"Does it matter?" the terrorist replied, in Japanese.

"So you do speak Japanese," SAILOR Moon said. "Why are you attacking Japanese citizens and US Military people?"  
"Heh, you don't know much, do you?" He spat some blood. "You think you work for the Japanese government, but you're actually working for them…"

He died.

"Working for whom?" Amy wondered out loud. "That was cryptic."  
"I guess," Serena said.

"Hey!" All the girls turned around to face a heavy armed SWAT team pointing assault rifles at them. "Hands up!"

Serena sighed. "Didn't see this one coming."

Suddenly, everything went black again.


	16. Chapter XIV: Lessons learned

**Chapter XIV: Lessons learned.**

**1630hrs, 23 July 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."__ Winston Churchill _

* * *

"That could have gone better," Akamatsu said to the SAILOR team. They were back in the big conference room, along with Dr. Kobayashi and General Ishimura.

"Let me see you try better," SAILOR Mars snarled back.

"Okay you two," Kobayashi said. There was powerpoint up on the projector screen, displaying the results of the test. "Let's get back to the statistics. The SAILOR team successfully engaged and defeated twenty terrorists. That's the good part. The bad part is…well, let me break it up into a couple of parts."

Everyone looked at each other. This wasn't going to end well, and they knew it.

"First off, splitting the group was a good idea, and it was good that SAILOR Mars and SAILOR Moon were at the position they were in, otherwise there would have been significantly more causalities than were incurred."

"And what were those numbers?" General Ishimura asked.

"Let's see." Kobayashi brought up a slide. "Ah yes. There were thirty-five dead, excluding the terrorists. Twenty were Japanese nationals, ten US Military or DoD employees, and five tourists or local civilians. There were seventy wounded, forty Japanese nationals, twenty US Military or DoD employees, and ten tourists or local civilians."

"Ouch," Akamatsu commented. "That would have been really bad in real life."

"Glad it didn't," Mars shot back. Everything that came out of Akamatsu's mouth was somehow demeaning to the SAILOR team.

"Anyway," Kobayashi continued on. "The problem wasn't with splitting the team up. The problem was the inadequate weapons that were employed with the team."

"But there really wasn't anything we could do about it," Serena complained. "You said yourself that it would be very difficult to change weaponry in the middle of an operation."

"That is true Serena, however, I confess that was done on purpose."

"Why?" Amy asked, frustrated. The image of 9mm rounds bouncing off of the body armor still lingered in her head.

Kobayashi sighed. "It was to see two things, one, to test your ability to adapt to the situation. You did that pretty well. Second though, was to demonstrate the need to bring better weapons to fit the situation. Raye's MP7 was able to penetrate the body armor, right?"

Raye nodded eagerly.

"And Lita, you noticed that one of the terrorists was still hurt by your pistol?"

"Yeah," she said. "But he still got back up. And I had to keep reloading."

"So, you're saying that the Glock I was carrying is completely useless?" Amy said. "I can't use it anymore?"

"Not at all," Ishimura said. "The thing is, your loadout would have been more than adequate for some local thugs or untrained backwoods militia. These terrorists were well prepared and armed with powerful, if dated weaponry."

"We would have been more conspicuous with heavier weaponry," Serena said. "Even if we used the FiveseveN pistols that use the same ammo as Raye's MP7, we still would have been outmatched." "Wearing body armor would have even noticeable," Amy said. "But concealment was completely negated because we started a firefight in crowded areas."

"That brings me to my second point," Kobayashi continued. "A massive firefight in two hotel complexes and in a street between you and the terrorists ended up not going well. And most likely, it would have resulted in strained relations between the United States and Japan. We had information that they needed to know about and we didn't tell them."

"So…this entire exercise was pointless," Mina said.

"Not exactly. We have friends in the world, and if we don't tell people if something is going on, then we can't use their help. But we don't need to tell our friends everything that goes on, now do we? You and Amy actually started to do this, but you continued in anyway."

Mina looked confused at Kobayashi's statement. "We…what did we do?"

"We talked to the police officer on the way up to the hotel," Amy said. "We kind of sort of told him that there might be a terrorist attack in the area, but we didn't give any sign of urgency."

"Exactly. You had a badge, yes? You could have manipulated the situation to have a large police presence in the area, deterring the attack. And you could have been gone by the time they figured out that you were not a police officer. Serena actually almost did that, but the 911 call got cut off."

"So," Mina said. "Manipulating people is just as good, even better than sometimes, bullets or bombs."  
"Precisely," Ishimura said. "I heard from the PM that you're pretty good at that."

Mina blushed. "I guess I am…but I didn't know how to do it in this situation."

Kobayashi smiled. "That's why we train."

* * *

The debriefing continued for another hour or so, then they dismissed for dinner. The girls went down the cafeteria and General Ishimura and Dr. Kobayashi stayed in the conference room (Akamatsu got kicked out and ate in his office…).

"That was quite a day," Mina said over a bowl of curry and tonkatsu.

"I really didn't expect all of that to happen," Amy said. She went with some korekke and Hamburg steak.

"It was like I was actually in combat," Raye said. "It was very exciting."

"What do think will happen now?" Lita wondered. "We did kind of fuck it up, massively."

"That test was designed to be a failure," Serena said suddenly. "Fits his name appropriately."

"Well, yeah," Amy replied. "He even admitted it. Our weapons loadout was crap, we were outnumbered four to one, with an opponent with better weapons, more firepower, better armor and the willingness to kill. That's not even going into the PR fallout that would have resulted in us being captured in an ally nation with firearms and especially after using those guns to kill a whole bunch of people."

"What do we do now?" Mina asked.  
"We have to show them that we can do it," Serena said firmly. "We've come too far now. I'm not going to let some VR test ruin my day."

"Agreed," Lita said.

"That makes sense to me," Raye replied. She got out a bottle of Mirin Ichiban.

"Where did you get that?" Serena asked her. "I kind of want some!"

"I bullied Akamatsu into giving some." She pulled out four more bottles from underneath the table. "It's a lot better than tea, that's for sure."

"Damn!" Lita exclaimed. "Give me that."  
Raye passed around the bottles of beer. "Okay everyone. Kanpai!" Even Amy gingerly accepted the bottle, wondering what it tasted like.

"Kanpai!" was the response.

* * *

"What did you think, General?" Kobayashi said, pouring some sake out of a fancy bottle.

"Like I said before, I was very impressed," Ishimura replied. "Kanpai!"

They both drained their glasses.

"I appreciate the sentiment, General, but…"

Ishimura heard the hesitation in his voice. "But what?"  
Kobayashi put down his glass. "Some of my people have complained about the Nakanishi Group is interfering with our operations."

"How?"

"A couple of weeks ago, one of Yamada's PAs came in and harassed one of my nurses. I understand that things might not work here the way they want them to work, but General,"

He leaned forward. "I will not let this program be taken over by a corporation."

Ishimura sighed. "Kobayashi, there are things that are way beyond my control. Nakanishi is one of them. You know about them and the PM?"

"Yes."

"It was they who came up with 'part' of the idea for this team," Ishimura said. He picked up his chopsticks and clasped on some salmon. "They helped, along with me and some others to put this entire project together."

Kobayashi picked up the sake bottle again and poured some more in the glasses. "Shit. I am working for a corporation now. Thought I'd never have to in my life, but there are some things that you just can't get away from."

"I'm sorry Kobayashi, but that's the way things are." Ishimura picked up some rice. "At least the Prime Minister shares some of your concerns. I talked to him yesterday and he's think about maybe scaling the program back a little."

"A little?" Kobayashi asked. "Why now?"

"I have no idea. Maybe Nakanishi is getting too involved in this program. Or maybe he's getting cold feet since he might have to face a vote of confidence soon."

"Great." Kobayashi sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. "Whatever though. It's alright," he said. "Despite what I think, or what the PM thinks, or what Nakanishi thinks, everything is working out pretty well in the face of everything that could have gone wrong."

"Exactly. I'll drink to that." They both raised their glasses.

"Same."

* * *

General Ishimura left that night, slightly tipsy, after being shown out by Dr. Kobayashi and the other "Ks".

He relaxed in his limousine, just wanting for the long journey back to Tokyo to get over with.

Brrrrimmmm.

"Dammit." It was his mobile phone. He had turned it off for the entire duration of the day and had only powered it on when he had got into the car. He checked the voicemail.

"You have fifteen new voice messages."

"Great."

After wading through fourteen requests for information, requests for raises, requests for this, that, and the other, he got to the last message.

"Ishimura," it began. It was Ichigo Yamada, Mr. CEO himself.

"This isn't going to end well," he said to himself.

"Ishimura, I have heard from my personal assistant that the project is continuing ahead very well. I need that project up to speed, regardless of what the PM thinks or does in the next couple of days."

_Does in the next couple of days? What is he on about? This is most certainly not good._

"In addition, make sure that all personnel are on deck with this project. I do not need any more…doubters. You know who I am talking about."

"Kobayashi," he said to himself.

"Replace people if you need to, but I need this thing out of the door in a couple of months or else my company goes on a downward slide, and we don't want that to happen, General. Especially to that nice retirement package that's all tied up in Nakanishi Group stock."

"Dammit."

"So, do what you have to do. I want results…General. Have a nice day."

The voicemail ended.

Ishimura sighed. "Looks like I have some more work to do," he said to himself. He dialed the PM's office.

* * *

"General, this better be good," the PM said somewhat groggily. He had gone to bed early, but his personal mobile went off just as he was nodding off.

"Who is it?" asked his wife.

"Just a moment. Sorry honey, I have to take this." The PM got out of bed and walked to his office.

"Sir, I just got a phone call from…a source," Ishimura went on. "It regards the SAILOR program."

_God, not this again, _the PM thought. "What about it?"

"I have heard that you might…do something drastic," Ishimura said.

"You presume too much," the PM replied. "I plan on to scale back the operations that SAILOR will engage on. It will be a domestic only program only. Saves us money and the political embarrassment if something goes horribly wrong."

_Which completely defeats the purpose of SAILOR_, Ishimura thought.

"Prime Minister, that's not an option," he protested. "I saw the progress that the SAILOR team is making. I give it a month before they're ready for deployment for real world operations."

The PM rolled his eyes. "General, I know about those fancy VR simulators that are being tested. Those don't count."

"Then sir, practice ranges, kill houses, live fire ranges and the other sites that we use must be completely inadequate," the General retorted.

"Dammit, Ishimura, what do you want?" The Prime Minister was getting really irritated. People from the Nakanishi Group had been calling, day and night. He felt like one of the many salarymen that they employed, harangued and besieged with requests for this, that and the other.

"Prime Minister," Ishimura said. "Reconsider your option to restrict the SAILOR group to domestic operations. That would not be in the best interest of Japan."

"Goddammit!" Hasegawa snarled into the phone. "And if I press forward, I might lose the position I fought so hard to get!"

"Sir," the General said. "You didn't get there without some significant help."

_Shoot. He's right._

"Fine. Fine. I'll not restrict the operations but if anything…" the PM gripped the phone very tightly. "If _anything_ goes wrong, I will pin this on you and the Nakanishi Group. This has nothing to do with me now."

"But the SAILOR group reports directly to you," Ishimura pointed out.

"I don't care!" Hasegawa snapped. "This has given me nothing but ulcers and migraines in the last couple of months!"

He paused for a second, then continued on.

"Just keep this under wraps, and everything will be fine. For now at least."

"Thank you Prime Minister," Ishimura replied. He hung up.

"You're welcome."

The PM stared down at the phone for a minute. He suddenly threw it across the room, and into a vase.

"Honey!" His wife came running down the hallway, but the security force was already in the room.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said to them. They had guns drawn, but they put them away once they saw what had happened. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence in the PM's residence, it being a stressful job and all.

"Sorry," he said to his wife. "I was just…some work, that's all."

She sighed. "It's always about work. Ever since we lost Yuna…"

"Don't," the PM said. He sat down in his chair and dismissed the security people. "Please, just don't."  
"There was nothing you could do," his wife said to him. "You were campaigning and then the tsunami happened…"

"I could have done something," Hasegawa replied. He reached inside his desk but his wife stopped him.

"Miko, please, just this once," the PM said to his wife.

"No, we can't go back there. You know how it was when you were addicted."

He sighed. Of course, the PM's wife was more right than he was. "Alright, you got me." He closed the drawer he was reaching in. "Let's go back to bed. I have a very long day tomorrow."


	17. Chapter XV: Enhanced Interrogation…

**Chapter XV: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.**

**0000hrs, 30 August 2013, Somewhere in Tokyo, Japan.**

_"Well I think we do have to define torture. One man's torture is another man's CIA's sponsored swim lesson." Rachel Marsden_

_"For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censoring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves." The Apology of Socrates._

* * *

The girls had been going through weeks of intensive VR training. Twelve, thirteen, fifteen hour days in the simulator, running every possible operation. Finally, they had been taken out of the medical facility by van and blindfolded.

As far as Amy could tell, they were back in Tokyo again, in a secure military facility.

"Guys…hey guys!" she whispered.

"No talking," a voice out of nowhere said.

"Fine, geez," she muttered.

An hour passed. Then two. Amy was getting really tired and hungry. Yesterday had been the most intense training session yet, eighteen grueling hours in the simulator, running ambushes, assassinations, surviving interrogations, car bombs, the whole lot of it.

The blindfold was lifted off and a blinding light turned on.

"Hey, what's the deal?" she said.

"Stand up," the voice said.

"Okay…" Amy stood up. She could see other girls in the room, having their blindfolds taken off by JSDF troopers. It looked like a warehouse of some sort, but it hadn't been used in years. "Who are you?"

"I'm Colonel Iwasaki," the voice said. He stepped into the open. "Ground Self Defense Force."

"That's great, but why are we here?" Serena asked.

"This is kind of the final test," he said gruffly. "I got a call from the Joint Chiefs and it looks like I'm in operational command of this…SAILOR force. That's a pretty piss poor acronym, but it's not up to me." Again, that was a complete lie; he had been there from the beginning.

He paused for a second. "Anyway, I'm all up to speed on what has been going on with you all. Dr. Kobayashi and Kawasaki explained everything to me yesterday in a phone call. I have to say, it's an interesting one. I'm actually envious of you all."

"Why would that be?" Lita wondered, suspiciously.

"Follow me, please."

Colonel Iwasaki walked toward a door with a keypad on the side of it. He punched in a code (24501, Amy noted) and they entered into a long hallway.

Five minutes of walking later, they came to an elevator, which took them down to a basement, to another long hallway and then finally, to an observation room overlooking six cells.

"What's this?" Mina asked. "There's six guys down there."

"Not any normal guys," Colonel Iwasaki said. "These are the 'maintenance' people from…well. Let's say that they're the guys that set off that explosion that sent you here."

The entire SAILOR team was silent. Finally, Serena spoke up, very slowly and carefully.

"Are you sure…? You're not mistaken?"

"We're positive," Iwasaki said. "We ran their photos with the people in the CCTV footage. It's an affirmative match."

Raye gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. "I want to kill them all," she growled.

"Just one."

"What?"

"Just one," Iwasaki repeated. He quickly smirked, but wiped it off of his face. "This is your final test. You will be assigned one individual to interrogate and gain as much information as possible from them. You will then terminate the individual by any means you see fit."

"What about the last person?" Amy asked. "There's five of us and six of them."

"That's the last part," Iwasaki said. "You will all interrogate the leader of the group. You will then terminate said individual."

"That's it?" Mina asked. "Do we have a time limit or anything?"

Iwasaki shook his head. "You must interrogate and then terminate. That's the only two parameters in this test. Everything else goes. If you need any tools, objects, or something that pertains to your interrogation, you are to ask us and we will provide it for you. Any questions?"

Raye raised her hand.

"Yes?"

"When do we start?"

Now Iwasaki smirked for real. "Right now."

* * *

The five prisoners were taken out of their cells, one by one and marched to specialized interrogation rooms down the hall from the observation room. On the doors to the rooms, they were marked R1, R2, R3, R4, and R5. In each room there were two chairs, a table, and a whole bunch of monitoring equipment.

* * *

Prisoner #10923 was taken to R1. He was blindfolded, and then handcuffed.

It was awhile before the interrogator came in and took off the blindfold and handcuffs.

"Who…who are you?" he said in very broken Japanese.

Amy came into view of the Prisoner. She was holding a tablet computer to take notes with.

"Doesn't matter," she said with a sad smile.

They waited for a few minutes. After a while, the prisoner spoke up again.

"What do you want?"

Amy was completely silent. She stared at him while pacing around the room, analyzing him, studying his body language and his reaction to her silence.

"Please," he said finally, in Korean. "What do want out of me?"  
"Well," she replied, in equally broken Korean. "What's your name?"

"My name is Myeong-su Jeong."

"What?"

"I said, Myeong-su Jeong."

"Okay, where are you from in Korea?"

"Please, don't deport me, I didn't do anything wrong."

Amy continued to circle around the hapless prisoner.

"Tell me, where are you from?"

"I'm from Daegu," he replied. "What's going to happen to my visa status?"

"I'm asking the questions here," Amy snapped. She regained her composure, and continued on. "Who asked you to carry out this mission?"

"What mission…?" #10923 asked. "I just work for the utilities company okay? This was the only job I could find coming over here."

Amy looked at the man. From what he was saying, that could be the truth. But she decided to dig further.

"You're hiding something from me," she stated. "You been in trouble with the law?"

Jeong sighed. "Yeah, you got me. I evaded the draft for a while, before they caught me and placed me in the military. When I got out, I got in with some bad people and then in debt. I managed to get a forged visa to escape all that and come here. But life here hasn't been good either."

Amy stoically nodded. Koreans in Japan were not treated well. Sometimes, they weren't even treated as second-class citizens, but as mere objects to be swatted away. A few Korean immigrants and their descendants, left over from WWII or from more recent times had changed their names and hid their identities to avoid discrimination. It was worse for the workers that were imported in to do the jobs that no well-respecting Japanese person would take.

"So, who was in charge that day?"

"Ah, Kim Yejun, he's from the North though," #10923 said. "Kind of loopy, if you know what I mean. He escaped from that place to the South, and then came on a work visa to Japan."

"And how long ago was this?"

"I dunno, maybe ten years ago when he escaped?"

"Hmm." She took some notes on her tablet computer. " Anything else? What about your work at Hikawa temple?

"Look, that day," #10923 stammered. "I didn't know what was going on. And the following times that we went there, Kim Yejun took care of everything, okay? He just paid us to stand around and do nothing, like most of those public works people, you know?" he laughed nervously.

Amy again, smiled sadly. "Is that all?"

"Well, yeah. When I heard about the explosion, I was kind of shocked, but I didn't do nothing wrong. It wasn't my fault!"

"And what did you tell the police?"

"Just that we didn't find anything when we were out there. Which is true. Kim showed us the gas sniffer and everything! There wasn't anything down there."

"And you believed him?" Amy found that very hard to swallow.

"Please, I needed the money," #10923 said in desperation. "I don't get paid to ask questions."

"But you knew that something was up," she accused.

"Well…yeah. And maybe Kim did something. But I don't care, I just need to start my life again."

Amy nodded. "Anything else?"

"No, that's it. Can I go?"

She ignored that last part. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

Ten minutes later, she came back in with a Taurus Model 605 revolver.

"Whoa, wait a second," Jeong protested. "I'm innocent!"

"That may be so," Amy said. She was cold now, no emotion at all. "But face it. You have no life after this. You'll be deported, then you'll have to face the people back home you owe money to. Even if you manage to stay here, then what? You don't have much of a future anyway." She opened the revolver chamber and put in a single .357 Magnum round. Closing the chamber and cocking it, she put it in front of him, on the table. "There is only one choice open to you."

There was silence. But then, #10923 started laughing.

"You can't do it, can you?" he said. "You don't have the guts to kill me."

Amy hesitated. He was kind of right. This was a real, live, human being, not a VR projection. But she steeled herself with logic and pressed forward.

"Okay, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. After this conversation, the temperature in here will be raised to forty-five degrees centigrade. You will not be given any food or water. You will die slowly of dehydration in the next three days. Those three days will be extremely painful and your death will be excruciating as your cells slowly dry out and die. Your head will swell. You will move slower. You will experience nausea, confusion and fatigue. You will start to hallucinate. You will start to lose sense of time and space. Your body will slowly start to shut down. Then, and only then, after about three days or so, you will finally expire. Or…" She pointed at the gun. "You can decide."

#10923 looked at Amy. She was right. But she was also a coward. "…and a pretty lousy coward, at that." Or so he thought anyway. He snatched the gun off the table and fired into the ceiling.

"If you want me to die, do it yourself." He tossed the gun back on the table.

"Okay. Be that way." She had the heat turned up, as far as it would go, past forty five, to fifty degrees centigrade. In thirty minutes, he was begging for water. So Amy brought in some water…in a completely full 55 gallon oil drum. As he tried to quench his thirst, Amy flipped him over into the drum and held his legs down. He took two minutes to stop struggling, and another two to die.

"Have a nice death," she said very coldly. "Should have done it yourself."

After that, Amy ran to the bathroom, puking the contents of yesterday's dinner up.

* * *

Raye's interrogation went slightly faster. Prisoner #11925 was sitting in room R2 when she burst in, carrying a Jerry can full of gasoline. She undid the blindfold but not the handcuffs.

"Hey!" #11925 said in Japanese. He was a street thug, not affiliated with the mob or anything like that. He was completely beneath them in that regard, and that was saying something. "What are you…"

Raye proceeded to dump the gasoline all over him. She reached in her pocket and got out a zippo lighter and lit it. She sometimes had a smoke here and there, but today, she was going to smoke one of the bad guys.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" He was panicking now. "I'll tell you what I know!"

She leaned in very close with the lighter. "You have thirty seconds to tell me everything about the job you pulled near Hikawa temple."

"Okay," #11925 replied, very nervously. "Kim..."

"Who is Kim?" Raye interrupted. "That could be anyone."

"Wait, wait, Kim Yejun, he's the boss! He's the one who planted the timer and the mobile phone!"

Raye closed the lighter and backed up. "Go on."

"He also paid that guy to drive around and to set off the timer with the mobile." He was getting dizzy from the gasoline fumes. "And…and…he paid us twice what they were paying us at the public works company. In cash."

"Anything else that I need to know?" Raye asked.

"No, that's all I know." #11925 sat back in his chair and exhaled. _That was a close one._

"Hmm." Raye circled him. "Well, if you have nothing else to say, then we're done here."

She flipped open the lighter and set him on fire. Raye left the room quickly, a smile on her face.

The room quickly turned dark with smoke, but the ventilation system kicked in and the smoke was sucked outside. Days later, people outside could swear they could have smelled the scent of cooked bacon and someone screaming.

* * *

Lita was probably the second fastest, next to Raye. She waltzed in room R3 and whipped the blindfold off, much to the surprise of Prisoner #12927, and delivered a punch (with her left hand), to his face.

"OW!" He yelled. #12927 was just an unemployed Japanese male, one of many in the country, and he took the job to pay off some debts. He had some minor run-ins with the law as well, mostly shoplifting.

"That hurt!"

"Yeah, well, that's for taking off my arm, you dumb fuck," she scowled at him.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" That brought another punch.

"Wrong answer. Tell me everything about your work at the Hikawa shrine."  
"Hikawa?" #12927 stammered back. "Look, I don't know anything."

"Liar!" She slapped him, this time, with her right arm.

"Okay! Fuck, lady." #12927 shook his head. It really, really hurt now. "We went to that road to do some work, that's all, I swear!" Lita raised her hand up again, and #12927 flinched. "And then we were called out some more times become some people complained about gas or something! That's all I fucking know about that!"

She brought her hand back down. "Who was your supervisor that day?"

"Kim Yejun."

"Okay." That she did know from the other girls. It had been transmitted via SMS to a mobile phone they had received at the beginning of the interrogations. "Alright, I know all about Kim, and he's from the North, and he did most of the work while you sat on your asses and did nothing. Right?"

#12927 nodded. "He paid us good money too."

"Yeah, whatever." She sat down in the chair opposite of #12927.

"What's your name?" she asked him.

"Asakura."

"That's it?"

"Yeah."

"Hmph." She stared at him. "Anything else you have to say?"

"Yeah, if you won't punch me anymore."

Lita nodded.

"I heard Kim talking to some guy over the phone about the gas line, something about it looking like an accident or something like that. He might have been Chinese, I don't know?"

Lita leaned forward. "Did you get his name?"

#12927 shrugged. "Chun, Ching, they all sound the same to me. He was talking about payment or something to that extent."

"Anything else?" Lita asked.

"Nah."

"Okay then."

Lita got up and started to leave.

"Hey, wait!" #12927 said. "Aren't you going to let me go?"

She turned and looked at him. "In a manner of speaking." Lita opened the door and left.

"Damn," #12927 muttered. "And I was looking forward to getting out of here." He rubbed his head. "So sleepy…" He put down his head on the table and fell asleep. Two hours later, he was dead from an intracranial hemorrhage.

* * *

Serena was taking her time on this one. #14929 was sitting comfortably in a chair in room R4, with some tea in hand. #14929 was also an unemployed Japanese male, like #12927, but was getting back on his feet nicely after a long spat of homelessness.

#14929's name was Kenta Abe, after Serena pressed him for information. He had been silent at first, but she was finally getting him to open up.

"Mr. Abe," Serena asked. "What were you doing when Kim was doing his work in the sewer?"

"I was sitting outside, with others."

"And he paid you to sit out there?"

"Yeah. I do what the boss man says," Abe said. "This is the first time I've had a job in years and I'm not going to rock the boat." He smiled. "Funny, isn't it?"

"What?" Serena asked absentmindedly, doodling on the notepad in front of her.

"Well, the first time I get a good job in years, I get picked up the police and get sent here. Funny that the police never picked on me…well, nothing like this anyway…in all the years I was homeless, but when I get a job, bang, here I am."

Serena shrugged. "Luck of the draw. I don't want to do this either, so just answer my questions, and we'll be fine."

Abe shrugged back. "Sure."

Serena continued down the list of questions on her notepad, next to the doodles of a plane and "Mamaru loves Serena" heart. "One of your coworkers mentioned that he heard Kim talking to someone about the gas leak. A Chinese person, perhaps."

"Oh, Mr. Chung?" Serena scribbled that down frantically. "Yeah, I even saw him once. He came by and talked to Kim when we were on break. He works at the Chinese Embassy."

"Does he now?"

"Yeah. But that's all I know. I think that they know each other from when he defected from to the South."

"Huh." Serena sent that information to Amy via SMS.

_Strange. Why would a PRC official be concerned with the wellbeing of a defector? They have both good relations with both the North and the South, but to show preference toward a defector might hurt relations._

Serena put away the mobile phone. Despite the boost in intelligence, Amy was still the one to know all of that stuff.

"Okay, how do you know that the Chinese guy worked at the Embassy?"

"He only drove up in a car that was Embassy marked."

"Oh. Anything else about the car or…?"

"Nothing special about it, was a Lexus...uh, I think it was one of those Hybrid vehicles."

"Right…" Beep. Another SMS from Amy. _That would be a Lexus HS series. _

"Thanks Captain Obvious," she muttered underneath her breath. _Did everyone get finished before me? Oh well_.

Serena switched the phone to silent.

"Did you notice anything suspicious about your coworkers as well?"

"Well, he did confer with the Korean guys on my team, but I figured because they were Korean and we were Japanese. I don't speak Korean, and I don't care to. But they met every Friday at a restaurant called Hallelujah. It's pretty good, actually."

Beep. _Dammit, I thought I turned you off._ Serena pulled out the phone again. _Hallelujah is located near Gaienmae Subway station, near Aoyama High School._

"Okay, now that was useful," she said.

"What was that?" Abe looked at Serena furiously sending an SMS back for everyone not to contact her during the interview.

"Nothing." Serena put the phone away and looked down at her notes again. "Is there anything else that you remember?"

"Sorry, that's all I got."

Serena looked at Prisoner #14929. He was in his early-fifties, slim build, average height, average weight, graying hair. He could have been somebody's grandpa, or father even. That made this next part even harder.

"Look, Mr. Abe. I'm sorry to have to do this, but there is…uh…a special circumstance that must be completed before I can let you go."

"And what would that be?"

"You are going to have to die." Serena almost choked on those words.

Instead of being shocked or angry, Kenta Abe shrugged. "Okay."

Serena looked at him. "Just…okay?"

"You know, there comes a point where I realize that something is going pretty far south and there's no way to come back. This would one of those moments. The second I step back out in the real world, I'll be back at step one. Or step zero in my case. I had a nice job, but that won't be waiting when I get out of here. Not that I had choice anyway. I knew that these guys were bad news, but I buried my head in the sand and didn't pay attention. My life has been filled with tragedy after tragedy. Lost my wife and kids in a divorce, yeah believe it, I had a divorce in this country. I lost my home, job, respect from others...I have nothing left but my honor, and very little at that."

"I…" Serena was completely at a loss for words.

"I don't hate you. You're just doing your job. I know that this is something that is way larger than myself. I just wish that this moment would have come later on, when I built my life back up. But I guess you can't win them all."

They stared at each other for a moment. Serena finally snapped out of it. "It's…my duty. This is something that I have to do."

"And like I said before, I understand. I just have one request."

Serena stood up from the chair she was sitting in. "Yeah?"

"Tell my wife and kids that I love them."

Serena could only nod. "Thanks," Abe said. "Oh, and make it quick. Nothing like a slow death, I guess."

Serena walked behind him. She placed his hands on his neck. "Close your eyes," she said. "This will be quick."

She snapped his neck, and Prisoner #14929 fell over limp.

* * *

Mina took the longest. By the end of hour ten, everyone was wondering what the hell she was doing to that prisoner.

#15931 was now completely dazzled by Mina's presence. He was another Korean on a visa and had never been around as someone as elegant and beautiful as Mina. #15931 name was Han Jihun, in R5.

"Your Japanese is very good," Mina noted. He had managed to hold his own in this conversation, and for having no formal education in Japanese, he was doing just fine.

"Soo," he said, to Mina across from him. She had just brought some more tea in for them to drink. "What do you do, other than this?"

"What do you mean, other than this?" She giggled, shuffling her bottom in the very uncomfortable metal seat.

"I mean, you must have something other than coming in and talking to me," Jihun said.

"Well, I am supposed to ask you all these questions about your boss and stuff, but they know everything about already."

Jihun scoffed. "Not that again. I meant, on your free time."

"That's real interesting," Jihun said. "My kids want to grow up to be one of those K-pop stars, like ah…uh…um…"

"BoA?" That was the first thing that popped into Mina's mind. "You have kids?"

"Yeppers, three young'ins in Milyang City." He pulled a small picture from his front pocket. At least the guards let him keep that.

"Wow…" Mina gulped. Three young children, two girls and one boy, stood waving, frozen in time.

"What are their names?"

"Well, the two girls are Jiu and Yunseo. That boy there? He's a Jihun, like me."

"You named him after yourself?" Mina asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It was my wife's idea," Jihun joked. "But yeah, after she died, they had to move in with their grandparents. I don't want them working the fields all their lives. Especially like me. That's why I'm here. To make sure that they don't."

There was a moment of silence.

"I'm sorry for your wife," Mina finally said. "I…well…I could arrange something for them."

Jihun perked up. "Really?"

"I might have some contacts that I can dig up. You know, provide a few favors here, some money there…and soon, they'll have a good education and a decent shot at a good job."

"Could…could you at least get my son out of the draft as well? I had to go through that and I don't…"

Mina shrugged. "Sorry, I'll see what I can do, but no guarantees."

Jihun still looked pretty relieved.

"But…there is something that you might have to do for me."

"Whatever I can do." Mina had really gotten his hopes up.

"You met at a restaurant called, ah…"

"Hallelujah," he replied.

"Yeah, that one. What did you all do there?"

"Well, Kim took Jeong and I to that place every Friday now for about…eh, three months now. We just chatted and made fun of each other. But one time…"

He stopped for a second.

"Go on, it's okay," Mina reassured him.

Jihun took a deep breath, and continued on. "He said that he still had some contacts in the North, and that they sometimes gave him money, you know, just to tell him what was going on. No military stuff, no politics, just…a status report."

"Uh-huh…" _So Kim was spying for the North Koreans._

"Look, we all need a money," Jihun said. "Even Kim, and he was a supervisor. He wasn't a bad guy. He's certainly no Kim Jung-un." He stopped for a second, then Jihun and Mina laughed at the unintended pun.

"Well, maybe that was a bad example," he said. "Anyway, that was only one time. He never brought it up again. He always stayed behind after we finished eating and went back to the hostel."

"Right…"

"And…well…again, this is none of my business, but I think the Friday before the explosion…the 10th, yeah, he had a very loud and heated conversation with someone."

"And you didn't tell this to the police…?" Mina asked, sharply. Jihun was taken aback. "I'm sorry," she quickly replied. "I knew some people…."

"Oh, I see." Jihun looked down at the table. "It's just that everyone is trying to get me deported back to Korea, where I won't have much of a life. Here, at least I can make some good money and hopefully make my kids' life better. I didn't want to rock the boat on this one. I just…"

"It's okay," Mina said. She reached out and touched his hand. He grabbed on and sobbed for a little bit. "Look, we haven't had lunch," she said to him. "How about I step out for a little bit and get us something to eat?"

"Yeah…" he replied. "That would be good."

She let go of his hand and started to stand up.

"Thank you."  
"Huh?" She looked back down at him.

"Thank you. You're the only one so far to treat me with dignity and respect."

She could barely smile. "You're welcome. This will be over soon."

Mina left the room and came back with some sandwiches and a glass of water for each of them.

"Thanks!" Jihun said. He gulped down the water and the sandwich.

A couple of seconds later, he started to feel weird. "Damn…I must have eaten too fast."

He started to tremble, then his vision went all blurry. Jihun stumbled out of the chair and looked for Mina.

But she was gone. He realized that she had been planning this all along, and it was too late. He would never see his children again.

Prisoner #15931 died soon thereafter.

* * *

"Oh my god," Mina said. She watched #15931 die from the observation room. Amy, Lita, Raye and Serena were there, along with Colonel Iwasaki.

"Heh, glad to see that guy go," Colonel Iwasaki said. "He was probably a NK agent and they made up all of that stuff."

Mina shot him a glare through a couple of tears in her eyes. She had just killed a father, and now his kids would suffer for the rest of their lives because of it.

"Oh come on," Raye snorted. "You don't believe any of that stuff that he said about his family? It's totally shopped."

"Raye, you didn't even ask the guy his name!" Mina snapped back. "You just dumped some gasoline on his head and set him on fire!"

"And it worked!" she retorted.

"Ladies!"

Serena interrupted them. "You did what you had to do. Mina, I understand. You were out when…"

She took a deep breath. "But we have to push forward. Or else."

There was silence. "Okay then," Serena continued. "Let's go talk to Kim Yejun."

* * *

The last prisoner waited in his cell. #16933, or now, Kim Yejun as the SAILOR team had now come to know him, had no idea what was in store for him. The door opened up to his cage, and he saw five, very, very, angry girls come in.

"What's this now?" he sneered (in Japanese). "JSDF resorting to women to interrogate me?"

"Come on," Lita said to him. She grabbed him and lifted him on his feet. "We're going for a walk."

They took him out to the docks outside (the warehouse apparently was in a wharf district); by the time they had done so, it was night again. They had waited for this moment for awhile now.

Yejun was blindfolded, and taken out to the middle of a large, flat area near the docks; where it was, he did not know. The air was hot and humid, and it felt like it would rain tomorrow.

"What are you doing to me?" he asked, but somewhat confident. "Can't be as bad as what those troopers did."

There was more silence. "Oh come on, now, cat got your tongue?"

Lita came up behind him and shoved him on the ground. "Come now, that wasn't bad at all."

Suddenly, he heard four engines start up. Yejun rolled over and saw that there were four SUVs (Land Cruisers, to be exact) parked to his upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right.

"Uh…"

Serena came into view. "Okay, this is how it's going to work. I'm going to ask you about Chung. You are going to tell me what he was doing here and why he wanted to blow up that area near Hikawa temple. Second, you are going to tell me the conversations you had with your NK contacts. Third, you will tell me why you did it."

Yejun spit at her. "Go to hell, lady."

"If that's the way you want to play it, fine. Girls!"

Amy, Lita, Mina and Raye exited the SUVs with some rope in hand. They started to tie his arms and legs up, then attach them to the SUVs.

"Okay, what are you doing?" The confidence in his voice was gone now.

"One of my people suggested it to me," Serena said. "It's an old method of execution called quartering."

"Yep," Amy continued. "You see, they would have four horses tied up to one person, kind of like what we're doing right now. And then they would have them gallop off, and the person would be torn apart."

Yejun was now very frightened. "Alright, I get the point! I'll tell you everything, just get the ropes off!"

"Not until you answer the questions," Raye said.

"Okay," Yejun said in a panicky tone. "His name is Hao Chung, or Zhung, something like that, okay? They pronounce their names funky!"

"You getting this?" Serena asked Amy.

"Yep." She was tapping out stuff on her tablet.

"And…and, he helped me to defect over to the South after I got fed up with the North!"

"We know that already!" screamed Raye. She kicked him in the ribs. "Tell us something we don't know!"

"OW! Fuck! I left the North because all the guys on the top got nice shit and I worked my ass off and got squat, okay!" He was breathing very hard now. "I met Chung when he came by and toured one of our weapons factories where I worked at."

He stopped for a second, but continued on after Raye prodded him in the ribs.

"I gave him some information about NK weapons and he agreed to set me up in the South. But when I got there, they completely left me out to dry. So I ended up working lots of odd jobs, and then applied for a visa to come over here. But I didn't get one, not until some people from NK contacted me and told me I had to spy on Japan, just little things though."

"Where does Chung play in all this?" Serena asked.

"He's a go between sometimes, since they're on better terms with NK. He gives me money, they give me money, and it's all good." He struggled with the ropes for a second, but was stopped by another prod by Raye.

"Until you blew up a street with five innocent girls on it," Serena stated.

Something clicked in Yejun's head. Five dead girls…but there were five here…"Oh…shit."  
"Yeah, oh shit is right," Lita said. "We're not quite dead. Just a precaution they had to take."

"So, why did you blow up the road?!" Amy yelled at him.

Yejun was panicking now. "It was Chung's idea! He needed a favor for some people and I would get paid a lot of money for it! Okay?"

"For who?" Serena asked. They were so close!

"I don't fucking know! Ask Chung! I just do what they tell me to do! He works at the Chinese Embassy!"

"We fucking know that!" Raye kicked him, harder this time. "Stop wasting our time!"

"I swear, that's all I know!" Yejun. He would have curled up into a ball but he was restrained by the ropes.

"Are you sure?" Serena said.

"Yes! Now will you please let me go?!"

There was a silence, then all the girls backed away. "Wait…hello? Guys…?"

Four car doors slammed shut. They all had their mobile phones on now, waiting for a SMS from Serena.

She was standing far enough away so that she wouldn't get splattered by the now doomed Kim Yejun. Serena texted out the message, "Do it," and hit send.

Three seconds later, the SUVs floored it and Prisoner #16933 was dismembered, the body parts flaying about behind the moving vehicles.

#16933 would have screamed out, but the shock was too great. Blood spurted everywhere as the SUVs came back, and as the SAILOR team approached, #16933 could faintly see them standing over him, watching stoically as he died. It was the last thing he saw.

* * *

"Bastard," Raye said, watching the light fade from #16933 eyes. "Got what he deserved."

"That's for taking off my arm," Lita spat.

"And for my legs," Serena added, somewhat more softly.

"Now what do we do?" Amy asked. "We killed all of them."

"We go after Chung," Serena said. "Or Zhong. Whatever his name is."

"Wish you could." The SAILORs turned around to see Colonel Iwasaki behind them, holding a piece of paper. "I did a check on Mr. Zhong…Chung…whatever. Turns out he was under investigation by the Ministry of State Security," he said. "He was doing some freelance work for 'somebody,' they don't know who, and a month ago he went to Hong Kong and no one has seen him since."

"So…" Mina said. "That's it."

"What, we just stop?" Raye chortled. "I don't believe it. We can't stop here, we need to keep going. We need to go to Hong Kong and find this guy."

"Raye," Amy interrupted. She had done a quick search on Zhong as well and had come to the same conclusion. "He's been gone for a month now. He has a month head start if in hiding or more likely, he's dead and no one had found him. We wouldn't even know where to begin."

"But why us!" Lita asked. "Who did he need a favor from?!"

Serena shrugged. "We'll never know now then."

"Be that as it may," Iwasaki said, "You passed."

"Uh…thanks," Mina mumbled.

"This project is officially in action," the Colonel went on. "Personally, you are going to do great out there. I'll tell Dr. Kobayashi and hopefully, you'll be in the field in no time. Oh, and don't worry about …that." He motioned to #16933. "I'll have someone clean it up."

He left, leaving the girls there.

"Well," Mina said. "That went well. Do you think we'll do good out there?"

"I sure hope so," Serena said. "I hope so."


	18. Chapter XVI: With Highest Honors

**Chapter XVI: With Highest Honors.**

**1320hrs, 31 August 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world." Tom Brokaw_

_"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." John Stuart Mill, On Liberty._

* * *

"Welcome back, girls." Kawasaki opened the doors to the SUVs that had brought them back to the medical facility. "I think you're ready for your first real world operation."

"Gee, thanks," Mina sarcastically said to him. She was still a little shaken up, and more than a little pissed off at having to kill someone who just happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Kim didn't count though; he deserved it, as far as Mina was concerned.

"Follow me, please." Kawasaki seemed to be a far better mood. They started walking up from the parking garage in the basement of the Medical Facility up to the conference room that they oh-so enjoyed. Other than the VR chambers, everyone complained that this room was where they actually lived rather than their living quarters.

"What's up with him?" Amy asked.

"Maybe he shacked up with Kuroi," Raye said. "They've been a little lovey-dovey since we got here."

"Uh-huh," Lita chimed. "And maybe you've been looking at all those videos too."

"And that Kuroi and Kawasaki totally…wait, what did you say?"

"You heard me right," Lita said, with a smile.

"Oh you bastard," Raye said. "How did you…?"

"It was Amy," Lita pointed out.

"Hey, you weren't supposed to tell her!" Amy protested.

"Oh you better sleep with one eye open, Amy," Raye threatened.

"It was Lita's idea!"

"BOTH of you better sleep with one eye open," Raye said. "I am so getting you back. And don't think your hacking skills can help you here, Amy."

They chatted with each other all the way up to the conference room.

"That's enough, girls," Kobayashi interrupted. The SAILOR team rolled their eyes and walked into the conference room. The three "Ks" were there, but in addition, Colonel Iwasaki and two other people were there as well, ones that they didn't recognize.

"Hello," Iwasaki said.

"How did you get up here so fast?" Amy asked. "You left right after we did."

"Well, I took a helicopter…" he said, somewhat embarrassed. "Yeah, I'm gonna regret that one," noting the glaring stares from the SAILOR team.

"Anyway," Kobayashi said. "From here on out, this will be your permanent station. We'll have you out on missions and stuff, but it's mandatory that the team gets at least one week rest out of every month. You'll be working hard, but you'll get good rest too."

"No offence doctor person," Serena said, "But who are you two?"

The two unknown people, one man and one woman, glanced at each other. One was wearing an Air Self Defense Force dress uniform while the other one was wearing a Maritime Self Defense uniform. The ASDF woman finally stepped up to the plate and introduced herself.

"Hello," she said. "I'm Lieutenant Yumiko Kitsune, JASDF. I…uh…" She looked at Iwasaki.

"Lieutenant Kitsune is your communications officer," Iwasaki said. "She has been assigned to this force after much consideration."

Kitsune smiled nervously. "That is correct. I will assist you in the field where possible. It's a pleasure to meet you."

The JMSDF person was next. "I'm Lieutenant, junior grade, Yuichiro Tanaka. I'm also a communications officer." He seemed a lot more laid back than Lt. Kitsune.

"These people will provide information and developments in the mission you will be working on," Kobayashi stated. "In addition there is a transport team, an acquisitions team, a finance team…"

"Wait," Amy butted in. "We have a finance team?"  
"Yes. How do you think all of this gets paid for?"

"I thought the government pays for it," Serena said.

"Well…" he said sheepishly. "We have to keep a low profile. So we…borrow it from other places. Like Swiss Bank accounts."

"And who would these Swiss Bank accounts belong to?" inquired Lita.

"They used to belong to…uh…the Nazis."

"Oh come on," Raye said. "That's just wrong."

"Hey, they aren't using it anymore," Kobayashi objected. "It's not like any one is going to come back to get that stuff. So we just…borrowed it. Permanently."

"Any place else that we get our money from?" Amy interrogated. "Let me guess. Seized drug funds, seized funds from convicted criminals, and several hedge funds leading to a Cayman Islands bank account. And the annual bake sale funds from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries office in Hokkaido."

"Ouch," Iwasaki said. "She's good."

"I only tapped into your email traffic and determined where the money was coming from last week," Amy said with a smile.

Kobayashi made a mental note to upgrade security and to put the girls' computers on a separate network. They kind of didn't think this one through.

"So, we are here today to first, celebrate your completion of training and second…give you your first mission briefing. Without further ado, Nurse Kuroi?"

Kuroi brought them each a nice certificate, framed in an oak casing and with a stand. The certificate read, "The Japanese Government hereby confers the rank of Captain on Serena Tsukino/Amy Mizuno/Raye Hino/Lita Kino/Mina Aino in the Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force (SAILOR-SF), along with the rights and privileges associated with the rank."

"Please raise your right hand, please," Kobayashi said. "And face toward the Japanese flag. Colonel Iwasaki?"

Iwasaki had placed a very large Hinomaru on the wall where the projector screen would have been. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and began to read from it.

"I hear by confer upon you the rank of Captain in the…" He took a deep breath. "Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force, by the order of the Joint Chiefs of the Japanese Self Defense Force and the Prime Minister of Japan." He looked at Kobayashi. _I thought that this was supposed to be all hush-hush,_ his look said.

_Hey, don't look at me,_ was the response from Kobayashi. _I just work here._

"Do you swear to defend Japan with all your mind, body, and soul?"

"I do," was the reply from the SAILORs.

"Do you swear yourself to secrecy, to preserve the confidentiality of this program?"

"I do."

"Do you swear loyalty to each other, to never leave a man…er, woman, behind in the field of battle?"

"I do."

"Do you swear, at all costs, to eliminate any threats to the best of your ability that might threaten Japan and the world at large?"

"I do."

"Do you swear to follow all of these obligations to the best of your ability, and to take these obligations without reservation or doubt, so help you god?"

"I do."

"Congratulations. Thank you all."

Iwasaki, Kobayashi, Kawasai, Kuroi, Kitsune and Lt. Tanaka all bowed to them.

The SAILORs bowed back, gracefully.

"Thank you, Colonel," Serena said. "Uh…Doctor Person. Thanks."

"It has been an honor," Kobayashi said. "I just hope that it has been enough."

"It has, Doctor," Amy replied. "Thanks for letting me tag along in some of your sessions."

"Not a problem. I know that you want to become a doctor someday, and this will help toward that, most certainly."

"Alright everyone," Kawasaki announced to the room. "We just need to get through this briefing then we can have cake and stuff."

That brought a groan from everyone.

"It'll be short, I promise."

"You said that about our last VR mission," Mina bitched. "And that was for like, eighteen hours!"

"No really," he replied. "But since this does concern your next mission, you will probably wish that the briefing was a bit longer."

"Fine, fine," Raye sighed. "Let's get this over with."

They all sat down in the chairs.

"Um, Colonel Iwasaki?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you take down the Hinomaru…?"

"Oh, sorry." He walked over the flag and proceeded to neatly take it down and fold it. Which took five minutes.

"Alrighty then…" Kawasaki said, glaring at Iwasaki. "This is a Mr. Park Minjun. He's a high ranking official in the Hyeonjun Heavy Industries company, and he's been kind of a pain of late. In the last year, he's defrauded billions of yen from Japanese companies and businessmen. He's also escaped the law in both South Korea and in Japan. So, your job is to take him out."

There was silence.

"That's it?" Serena asked.

"Told you this briefing was going to be short," Kawasaki said. "We don't know where he is at the moment, but we should know in the next couple of days or so. It's up to you and your team to then find out the best way to carry out the mission. Any questions? No? Let's have cake then, shall we?"

Kuroi wheeled a big sheet cake that said, "Congratulations!"

"Reminds me of Evangelion," Raye noted.

"Don't remind me." Amy rolled her eyes at that.

"Congratulations!"

"Shut up, Raye."

Serena helped herself to some cake that Kuroi had just cut. "Mmm...this is so good." She walked off to enjoy it, snagging another piece as she did so.

"Well, thanks, Kuroi-sensei," Mina said, taking some cake.

"Like I said, you don't have to call me that," Kuroi replied curtly.

"It was a joke." Mina wondered what was eating at Kuroi lately. She seemed to be in a fouler mood than ever before.

"Are you going to eat that?" Serena asked her. "Or do I have to finish it?"

"Oh come on." Mina snatched her cake away from SAILOR Moon. "You grabbed two pieces and besides, there's plenty left."

"Hey now," Kuroi said. "Serena, just take some more." She cut off a large piece of cake and put it on Serena's plate.  
"Thanks Nurse Kuroi!" Serena ran off and pestered Lt. Kitsune.

"So, how are you doing?" Serena munched on some cake.

"I…uh…I'm doing just fine," she replied.

"What do they call you?"

"Excuse me?" Kitsune asked, puzzled.

"What do they call you? We have different callsigns? I'm SAILOR Moon, for example."

"Oh…oh…" She was kind of embarrassed by that.

"What did you do…?" Serena pried, with a smile on her face.

"Well, they call me 'Luna', because, ah…"

"Go on," Serena cajoled.

"You know that air force base near Yokoda?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, it was a dare. Somebody challenged me to well…moon some of the incoming airplanes that came into the air base. And I just happened to choose a night that had a full moon. "Luna replied embarrassed. "It was all quite silly. But that's the reason why I got my callsign."

"Hey, that sounds like something I would have done," Serena said. "I would have lost weight just thinking about it!"  
They both laughed, with Luna wondering why the hell she was bringing up weight loss all of a sudden. The party went on for a while after that, with Raye breaking out some beer and sake, and soon enough, everyone was spectacularly wasted, even Amy was more than drunk. They stumbled back to their rooms somehow, and collapsed into bed, asleep and happy that for the most part, the real work could begin.

* * *

The next day (and slightly hungover), despite all the partying, they began to plan the mission with Col. Iwasaki, Lt. Kitsune and Lt. (jg) Tanaka.

"From numerous sources," Lt. Kitsune stated, "We have located the location of Mr. Park's weekly transit route that he takes from Yangsan about an hour or so drive from Busan, where he does his work. He prefers to travel at night, for security precautions. He stays for about four days in Yangsan, then goes back to Busan on a Thursday."

The SAILOR team was frantically writing down notes, with the exception of Amy, who was again, tapping stuff out on that tablet computer of hers'. "Interesting work schedule," she commented.

"Kim usually comes through here," Iwasaki said, pointing at a map on the projector screen. "He has a large escort, but the force is unknown at the time. You are to ambush this force at this location."  
"Why are we starting a firefight in the middle of a large city?" Mina asked.

"Need a plausible story. Blame it on the North Koreans, since they would do something that brazen," Iwasaki said.

"I see," Mina replied. "But won't that attract a lot of police attention?"

"That is correct. Again, we need to do it this way or else some people will start asking questions. Shifting blame to another party is part of the job, and with both nations paranoid of each other, it won't be hard to pin it one or the other."

"Why can't we hit him at his home or work?" Lita asked.

"Too heavily guarded and such. This is the only time he has a small enough force for you to handle." Iwasaki looked around, somewhat annoyed by the interruption, but these were sensible questions. He continued on with the briefing.

"Anyway, I thought it prudent to rent a room under a shell company name in this skyscraper here to provide overwatch on the road, here. I had the finance guys get that office under a known NK shell company name. Didn't take that long either." He pointed at a high rise right next to the road.

"That's a pretty big road," Mina noted.

"Eight lanes across, with a median in the center," Amy said. "Looks like we'll have to block off the road or force the convoy of vehicles onto a smaller road."

"We should engage the force on the bigger road," Raye piped up. "Here's my plan. Have the team ambush the convoy on the ground with SUVs or something like that, and shoot the cars up then drive away. Forget waiting around in that stupid skyscraper thing, let's just get him there."

"I say we force him off on this service road here." Amy pointed out to some smaller, two lane roads near the skyscrapers. "Somebody in that building provides overwatch, calls out to the cars to force him off of the road into these roads here, and then kill him there."

"That takes too much effort," Raye complained. "Why can't we just kill him on the main road? Good fields of fire, plenty of space…"

"And plenty of chances for him to get away," Amy replied. "We can't let him have the chance to drive off."

They argued about it for about an hour, then finally Mina and Serena came up with a compromise solution.  
"Okay, so here's how the operation will work out," Serena announced. She put a map up of the area around where Kim's convoy would pass.

"Amy and I," Mina said, "Will be in the room that was rented by Col. Iwasaki, taking overwatch of the road and giving fire support if need be. We will call out the SUVs and their strength."

"Lita, Raye and I," Serena added, "Will be on the ground level in cars or something to that extent. We will block off the opposite side of the road that the convoy will be coming from. When the convoy gets close, our team will close in and engage the convoy. We will then make sure that everyone is dead."

"Sounds simple enough," Iwasaki said. "Lts, do you have any objections?"

Of course, they didn't.

"Uh, one question." It was Amy, as usual.

"If we carry out this attack, we can't use Western arms or explosives," she stated. "If we do this, then we have to use Russian, Chinese, or North Korean weapons."

"Blame it on the North Koreans, like I said before." Iwasaki said in response. "I personally enjoy that idea. We'll get you those weapons and everything else for this mission."

This time, Mina raised her hand. "Where are we going to be staying for this trip?"

"We've put you up at some hotel at the moment. We tried to get a safehouse, but after renting that room overlooking the ambush route, we couldn't get one due to everyone snapping up residential property in South Korea at the moment. Space is very limited, and paying a couple million won for a house or apartment that we might not use again doesn't really suit our needs for now. It's not ideal, since we can't control the environment at the hotel, but it'll have to do for now."

"Which hotel?" Mina asked.

"The Westin Chosen."

Amy threw up her hands in disbelief. "Oh, you can't get us in at a safehouse, but you choose a five star hotel instead? How is that conductive to special operations?"

"Hey, they didn't ask any questions," Iwasaki responded. "It's a good place to hide out anyway. Blend in with all the rich people."

The room grew silent at that remark. Sensing the irritation of everyone, Iwasaki decided to end the meeting.

"Any other questions?"

There were none, mostly out of the sheer idiocy that had befallen the planning session.

"Very good then. How about some lunch?"

* * *

Since they had finally gotten a plan together, they all went to go get lunch in the cafeteria. Mina had gotten into a nice conversation with Lt. (j.g.) Tanaka over curry and rice.

"So, why do they call you Artemis?"

Lt. (jg) Tanaka sighed. "I used to be really interested in Greek stuff before I sobered up and got an actual degree. This one time, I got so wasted that I declared myself Artemis, even though Artemis is a female god and not a male one. Nonetheless, my squadmates found out, and so, I've been called that ever since."

"And that doesn't embarrass you at all?"

"I mean, the entire incident does, yes, but that callsign? Nah, most people don't even know who Artemis is anyway."

"Besides your coworkers," Mina smirked.

"Yes, besides them," he said, rolling his eyes. Artemis leaned back in his chair. "What about you?"

"Well, I wanted to be a J-pop star, but other things got in the way," she said with a smile. "Like this."

"That's too bad," Artemis commented.

"I know. But it will all work out, in the end."

"Aw, those two look so cute." Lita noted the two of them talking to each other.

"Well, glad to see somebody is making friends," Raye quipped. "Unlike some OTHER people here who should mind their own business."

"Oh hush," Lita said, taking a bite out of a sandwich. "You're just mad because you got found out."

"Fuck you," Raye replied, tossing a piece of salmon at Lita's face.

"Hey!" Lita responded with a piece of bread, and a small scale food fight broke out.

"That's enough, all of you," Kobayashi intervened, finally after two minutes of food throwing. Amy had gotten a faceful of rice, Lita and Raye were covered in each other's lunches, and Serena and Mina had big splotches of curry on their dresses they had worn that day.

"Nice," Serena said facetiously. "Just the way I wanted my day to go."

"Whatever," Raye said, leaving the room to change. "See you guys later!"

"Make sure that you're back for the briefing at 1500!" Iwasaki yelled out, almost slipping on a banana peel on the ground. He had also caught a piece of cherry pie square in the chest, and was sopping it up haplessly with a napkin.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Lita replied. She also left to change, slipping out with a piece of cake to get Raye back.

For a moment, it seemed like this was just a group of normal kids at school, playing with each other and acting, well, like the teenagers that they were.

But that was not the case, nor would it ever be.


	19. Chapter XVII: Blue on blue

**Chapter XVII: Blue on blue.**

**0000hrs, 5 September 2013, Shinsegae, Busan, South Korea.**

_"I'm getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties. I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning." Ann Coulter._

* * *

"God, that mall is huge," Mina said. "Wish I could shop there."

She and Amy were in a very tall skyscraper, overlooking the Shinsegae, or "New World," shopping complex in Busan, in the very south of…well, South Korea. The Shinsegae store here was the biggest in the world since 2009, and even surpassed the Macys in New York City. The normally busy road was dead quiet since it was the dead of night, and the Mall was undergoing some minor renovations.

This was their first operation in the real world, and hence, everyone was extremely nervous. They had done days of VR simulations in the last month, but this was real life now, and if you died here, you died for real. And even if they had killed a real person, that was under a controlled circumstance and was only to toughen them up for the things ahead. After finalizing the mission details, the SAILOR team had been shipped over to Busan just yesterday, and had set up in the hotel nearby. They were checked in under an obscure Japanese (in actuality, a North Korean) trading company, and had unpacked their equipment in there. Amy, along with Luna and Artemis, had taken the liberty of disrupting the CCTV network around the area a couple of hours before the operation so that nothing would record their presence in the area while the attack went down.

"Who's the target again?" Mina asked.

"A Mr. Park," Amy stated. "Didn't you pay attention in the briefing?"

She brought up a profile of the target on the eyepieces they were wearing.

"That's like, half the people in Korea," Mina said. "And not really."

"I know, I know," Amy said. "This is Park Minjun, the CFO for Hyeonjun Heavy Industries. He is suspected of defrauding several Japanese businessmen and companies, but has effectively avoided prosecution in both South Korea and Japan. He travels in a convoy of three SUVs, fifteen bodyguards in total, armed with pistols and SMGs, type, unknown. There is a backup team trailing a half of a kilometer down the road, consisting of three more SUVs and fifteen bodyguards." Luna had gotten that information actually through a news report on Mr. Park only hours before, stating that he needed such a large escort due to threats against him.

"Don't you find it strange that we just killed some Koreans?" Mina asked out of the blue.

"Huh?"

"I mean, your guy and my guy were both Koreans. And here we are, about to assassinate yet another Korean dude. What's up with that?"

"Mina, I don't know," Amy replied. "Focus on the job at hand."

Mina sighed. "Yeah. I know." They stayed quiet for a little bit after that.

"Target located," Amy reported. She saw three vehicles approaching from the across the bridge. "Three SUVs, marking now."

The eyepieces HUDs of the SAILOR team lit up, showing the location and movement of the convoy. Amy hit the transmit button on her eyepiece to send a radio message to a P3 Orion flying over the Korean Strait.

"This is Mercury," Amy said.

"Mercury, send traffic," was the response from Luna.

"Any police presence, Luna,?"

"Negative, SAILOR Mercury," Luna replied. "I haven't detected anything on the police network as of late, just the usual traffic. Over."

"Affirmative, out."

"Get ready everyone," Amy said. "Mina, on that rifle if we need it."

"Right." Mina had already set up a Chogyok-Pochong sniper rifle, a North Korean variant of the M76 Zastava. "Make sure you break that window if we need to." She had also set explosives on the window overlooking the massive eight lane road near the shopping mall.

"Got it." Amy held the detonator in her hand, ready to go.

* * *

"I see them," Serena said. She was parked in a Hyundai Carnival, acquired by the finance team, waiting in a small access road by the skyscraper that Mina and Amy were in. Raye was there too.

"Going into battle in a minivan," Raye sarcastically commented. "Wonderful."

"Hey, don't be hating on the minivan," Serena replied. "That's how we got all this stuff in here." She pointed at the backseat. Packed in there were North Korean uniforms, ammunition, and propaganda, everything needed to blame this on the North.

"Whatever. I got the RPG ready."

"Good, Lita, you ready?"

"Affirmative," Lita said. She was waiting in another Carnival down the road, ready to hit the convoy from behind with a Type 62 LMG, a NK variant of the RPD machine gun. Serena's team were all wearing black fatigues and ski-masks, and had all NK or Chinese made weapons imported to NK so that the connection would be clear to the South Korean government; North Korea was most certainly behind this attack. They had blocked off the opposite side of the road with a few bribes to the local public works company ("Not these guys again," Mina complained), who had let them "borrow" portable, plastic jersey wall and some cones on the other side to "symbolize" some sort of construction work, much to the annoyance to the locals.

"On my mark." Serena saw the SUVs slow down to make sure that the road was clear at a stop light, but blazed right through the red. "Standby."

Amy watched the SUVs continue down the road, toward Serena's position. She noticed something on top of the middle SUV in convoy, but she couldn't make out what it was…

"Go." Serena floored it and ran right across into the path of the lead SUV and stopped about fifty meters in front of it. At the same point, Raye ducked out of the side door and fired her RPG. It was a perfect shot…except that the RPG exploded before it hit the lead vehicle.

"What the…"

"Shit!" Serena rolled down her window and started firing her Type 63 Carbine, a SKS knockoff. "Reload!"

"Loading!" Raye rammed a fresh round into the RPG and prepared to fire.  
Lita was behind the convoy, engaging the team that had poured out to attack her.

"This is Jupiter! These guys have M16s! Engaging!" Lita fired in short bursts, trying to prevent the convoy from leaving. She managed to puncture some tires in the center vehicle and some rounds in the engine block, stopping it from leaving.

"RPG out!" Raye yelled. She fired the RPG again, but like last time, it detonated before the first vehicle.

"What the fuck!" she exclaimed, reaching for another round.

"Any time now Mars!" Serena shuffled from the driver's seat to Raye's position to get a better firing angle.

"I'm trying Serena!"

* * *

Up in the skyscraper room, Mina watched the firefight with growing unease.

"Doesn't look like things are going well down there," she said nervously.

"Goddamnit!" Jupiter yelled over the radio. "Blow the SUV now!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Mars yelled back.

"Wait, wait." Amy looked back at the center SUV. That thing she had seen earlier…she accessed the database of military hardware in her eyepiece.

"Shit," she said.

"What is it?"

"That's a hard kill system on top of the SUV. It takes out stuff like RPGs and missiles."

"Great, what are we going to do about that?" Mina's trigger finger twitched.

"I'm marking it on your HUD." Amy scanned the area and marked the hard kill system on the SUV. She also illuminated more targets. Several of the body guards had gone down, but there was still a lot of fire coming from the area down there. "Backup bodyguard team is five mikes from position," she noted.

"Mercury, SAILOR Moon." Luna's voice was the last thing that they needed to hear right now.

"Send traffic," Mercury replied. "What?!" was the less polite (and incorrect protocol) response from SAILOR Moon.

"The police channels just lit up," Luna reported. "I have five police units en route to your location. In addition, the local SWAT team is being deployed and will on location in fifteen minutes. Over."

"Affirmative," Amy said. "Got it," Serena echoed.

"Okay, Mina, take out that hard kill equipment there. I got the detonator. In three. Two. One. Now."

Amy blew out the window and a second later, Mina fired her sniper rifle at the hard kill system. She then engaged any remaining personnel on the ground.

"It's down!" Amy yelled in the radio. "Mars, take the shot!"

Raye wheeled around and fired the RPG at Kim's SUV. Without the hard kill system, there was nothing to stop it. It detonated on contact, blowing up the SUV and everyone inside it. But just in case, Raye fired another RPG at the vehicle, just to be sure.

"All SAILOR units," Artemis' voice over the radio said. "Get out of there, backup team in one mike from your position and multiple police units closing in."

"Affirmative!" SAILOR Moon and SAILOR Mars piled back into their now bullet ridden minivan and backed up, fleeing from the scene along with SAILOR Jupiter.

"Hurry," Raye said. She could see police cars approaching from the south and west, along the eight lane road. Serena and Jupiter would have to evade the police by driving along the side roads, headlights out and speeding along the quiet residential areas to the ocean.

They would then abandon their vehicles and equipment near a wharf and hastily set them on fire.

"Damn, that was close," Raye said, looking at their minivans on fire. "I kind of miss that car."

"You were bitching about it earlier," Serena said.

"Well, I changed my mind. Where's Jupiter?"

"I'm here." Lita came running up behind them, after setting her car on fire. "Man, this is going to make the North look so bad."

"Tell me about it." Serena looked back at the two plumes of smoke billowing from the docks, and then hurried away into the night, catching a cab back to the hotel.

* * *

Up in the skyscraper, Mercury and Venus had a different escape plan. They had planted explosives in the room they had been renting, and left the room in hurry, along with the incriminating evidence that would say that the North Koreans had been here.

Mina and Amy hurried down the stairs. The police were already there, scouring the area and asking questions to the few people there at the time, but this was to be expected. Mina hit the detonator.

The resulting explosion shattered half of all the windows in the building and woke people up for miles around.

They escaped in the confusion, walking for a couple of kilometers before hailing a cab to take them to the RV point, which was at their hotel on the beachfront of Busan, the Westin Chosun hotel.

"Goddamn," Mina said, getting out of the cab and paying the cabbie an extra thousand won or so to make him "forget" that they were ever there. "That was something else."

"Better get out of these clothes," Amy replied. "They don't know that it was us in the attack, but better safe than sorry."

"I'm right with you on that one," Mina said. "Hope the other guys got back okay."

"I'm sure they did."

They walked up to the third floor where they had their rooms, next to Raye and Serena, and Jupiter, who got her own room ("Lucky," Mina bitched.)

After they had gotten changed, Amy knocked on Raye and Serena's room. No response. Mina and Amy looked at each other. She knocked again. Still no response.

"Okay, this is not good," Mina said, nervously. "Got your sidearm?"

"Yeah." Amy checked her Glock 26 and took it out of her purse. "I'm going to bypass the electronic lock." She used some of the on board tools in her eyepiece and unlocked the door. Mina went in, gun up, expecting trouble, but instead…

"Oh for crying out loud," she hissed.

Raye and Serena were fast asleep, with a bottle of champagne from room service by their bed.

"What kind of champagne is it?" Amy scanned it. "Wow, a 1998 vintage Dom Perignon, that's nice."

"I wonder if Iwasaki knows about it?" Mina said.

"He does." Luna's voice came in over the radio.

"I thought you went off duty," Amy replied, somewhat snarkily. They had stopped using proper protocol for now, since they were out of the danger zone. Luna made a note about that and decided to write a memo to Iwasaki about following proper procedure during an operation.

"Hey, we still have to look after you guys," Luna said. "Even though you do outrank us."

"Whatever." Mina stared at the two sleeping girls. "Well, they deserve it…for now I guess. We'll just have to see until later in the day how our attack went."

"They did do most of the heavy lifting," Amy noted. "I tracked about four-hundred rounds fired in their general vicinity during the firefight."

"That's a lot."

"That still doesn't excuse…" Luna began, but Amy cut her off.

"No offense, Lieutenant," and Amy put extra emphasis on Lieutenant. "But you're not the one down here taking the risks. We can handle ourselves just fine, thank you very much."

"I…of course, SAILOR Mercury."

"You're welcome, Luna. Anything else that we need to know about?"

"You're slated to depart in twenty four hours. We expect the police to lock down most of the transportation networks for at least a day and we don't want to raise too much suspicion by leaving too soon."

"Not that they suspect us anyway," Mina replied. "They're looking for NK commandoes, not five women."

"That may be true, but we have to keep this…how do you say…on the DL?"

"Uh-huh."

"Okay, we'd better let them sleep." Amy and Mina backed out of the room and closed the door.

* * *

A couple of hours later (and some rest on Amy and Mina's part), they turned on the television to see their handiwork.

"Can you translate this?" Mina asked Amy. "My Korean wasn't so good."

"Sure."

The newscaster was stoic in his voice as he reported the attack.

"At around 12:30am this morning, a convoy carrying the CFO for Hyeonjun Heavy Industries, Park Minjun was attacked by suspected terrorists sponsored by North Korea. Park Minjun was killed in the attack, along with seven bodyguards. Weapons and explosives found on scene were of North Korean origin and a room overlooking the rented a couple of a days ago to a company turned out to be a North Korean shell company incognito. We go to Kim Minseo, on the scene of the ambush."

The camera switched out to the ambush site, with one burned out SUVs and two very shot up ones.

"Thank you Geonu. I'm here on the scene of the crime, where hundreds of bullets were fired last night at this location. Several witnesses heard multiple weapons being fired and loud explosions, presumably from an RPG found in a minivan, abandoned at a commercial wharf several blocks away. There was also another explosion from a rented office on the tenth floor of this building…"

The camera panned up to show a bunch of shattered windows and a big scorch mark where Amy and Mina had done their firing from last night.

"Nice work," Amy complimented.

"Thanks."

"…which contained a sniper's nest and observation post. Police have confirmed that this was rented by a shell company used by the North to conduct overseas business. Live, from Shinsegae, I'm Kim Minseo."

"Thank you Minseo. The North Korean government has strongly denied these accusations, but with the hostile overtures in recent month concerning North Korea's weakened economic state and nuclear weapons program, this attack may be part of a larger conspiracy to undermine South Korea."

Mina muted the television.

"Well…" she said. "We did good."

"I certainly hope so," Amy replied, looking at the TV screen.

* * *

Not too far away from the SAILOR team was a man called "Jadeite," head of Nakanishi's operations in Asia proper (covering China, South Korea, Taiwan, Southwest Asia, and India). He was actually staying in the same hotel, for some odd reason.

"Hey, Jadeite." The man called "Jadeite" was on the (secure) phone line with somebody in Japan. She had called a couple of hours after the attack had happened.

"Hmm?" He was bored now.

"Did you hear about the attack on that CFO from Hyeonjun Heavy Industries?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Well, we can go ahead with the acquisition. He was probably the only one holding the entire process up." Beryl could almost cackle evilly at that point, but she restrained herself. Barely.

"Really now? That's very convenient of that to happen, at this time." Jadeite was completely playing dumb on that last one.

"Don't be so daft," Beryl chided. "You know why I did that. The PM is completely in my pocket, and SAILOR does whatever I tell it to do."

"Wow, you are one massive bitch," Jadeite complemented.

"Amazing isn't it?"  
"What about Yamada?"

"Yamada is too busy getting stoned out of his mind right now. All he cares is if the balance sheets add up and he gets a billion plus yen check in the mail. So I get to run most of the business and he gets to party. Works for all sides involved."

Jadeite lay back in his bed. Things were looking up. Then he remembered something.

"Hey…don't we keep tabs on some of the NK sleeper cells here? There's actually…" Jadeite checked his encrypted computer. "…one nearby."

"Yeah, what about them? After this, they're going to continue to keep quiet."

"Well, picture this. Two incidents in one day. Famed CFO gets knocked off by a North Korean commando squad, right? Then a NK sleeper cell turns up dead, knocked off by a rogue arm of the NK military, trying to assert itself. In the same city, on the same day, within a five kilometer radius. This makes the NK government look weak and forces their hand on some things…"

"Jadeite, you're playing with fire here…" Beryl knew that he could suggest some batshit crazy ideas at times.

"We know who planned their nuclear program. We can shut it down if we want to."  
"Even though, there are thousands of artillery pieces pointed at Seoul alone. I don't want a war wiping out all of Korea and a huge chunk of business with it." Beryl was always calculating, looking at the strategic view. Two highly militarized nations with enough firepower to wipe out all of Korea and then some would not be conductive to a business environment. Jadeite was already ahead of her in that regard though.

"All this tension will create demand for some of our products, and with Hyeonjun Heavy Industries in our pocket…"

That set a light on in Beryl's head.

"…we can cater demand to the South Korean government and military, Jadeite, you're a fucking genius."

"That's why you pay me the big bucks." Jadeite smiled. _I love my job._

Beryl certainly seemed relieved on the other end, especially since what Jadeite was suggesting could amount to a full scale war between two very heavily armed and dangerous countries. But his rational made sense, for now at least.

"How is the SAILOR team doing at the moment?"

"They're doing good. Two of them are completely hung-over and the other three are awake, and letting the stress from last night bleed off. It was my idea to put them up here. They're just women, they don't know how to live on the fly like us men."  
"I'm a woman," Beryl replied, very coldly. Jadeite was not PC at all.

"I know that, but you're special. These girls are pumped full of VR and healing fluid, and now that they've killed some people, it's only going to be 'when' they crack. Men can take that. Women can't. Except you."

"Uh-huh." Beryl made a mental note to admonish Jadeite for his sexist views later on. But she was still in a good mood and she wasn't going to lecture one of her best company officers for his beliefs.

"Keep an eye on them and then return to Japan. I just wanted to see how they did on their first mission. I'll send the orders to the PM and have them attack that NK sleeper cell. Thanks Jadeite."

"Not a problem, Madam Beryl." He hung up the phone and took a sip of the juice he had ordered from room service.

"I love my life," he said to no one in particular.

* * *

"Change of orders, SAILOR Team," Luna said.

"What's up?" Mercury asked. Mina and Amy were still in the room, going over the after action report that their eyepieces has collected. Jupiter had finally gotten up and was stumbling around in her room, while Raye and Serena were still in bed.

"We have suspected NK sleeper cell in the city and they have been pushed to action by our recent attack. They are holed up in a residential district and are preparing to move within the hour."

"For what? That makes absolutely no sense," Amy said.

"For whatever reason, we intercepted orders from NK GHQ to activate this cell and to attack police and military installations."

"Couldn't they hold off?" Amy was getting really suspicious now. _A North Korean attack, right after our false-flag operation? _The idiot ball was rolling on this one now, and where it would stop, nobody knew.

"That's a negative. The orders were to conduct a raid on targets of opportunity in the area and to cause disruption of communications and civil order." Luna was reading off the report that had been handed to her not just ten minutes before. Artemis and Luna, along with Col. Iwasaki were back on the ground now, having landed at Misawa AFB in the north of Japan. "Stand by for location of sleeper cell."

"Who the hell came up with these orders?" Iwasaki said, reading off the paper that had come direct from the JCOS and the PM. "I mean, I'm all for killing more Koreans, but this might make it a little bit more difficult."

Luna ignored her CO's comments and continued relay orders to the SAILOR team.

"The sleeper cell is located in a residential area three kilometers from your position. 41303-422 Millak-dong Suyeong-gu is the address of the building. I'm punching it up on your map right now."

Luna sent the data to Amy's eyepiece, as well as Serena's. But she was asleep, so she didn't hear the beep of an incoming transmission.

"Luna, that's barely a kilometer away from where we conducted our last operation. Advise best course of action."

"Affirmative. Take the alternate route I have placed on your map. That will take you across a bridge that is not guarded by the police and toward the residential district. Suggest that you use suppressed weapons or hand to hand takedowns as not to inform the residents of your presence and attract police attention."

A longer route that would take them across a bridge, then up through a series of small roads would take them to their destination showed up on Mercury's eyepiece.

"Advise, we do not have any means of transportation."

"Mercury, just take a damn car," Luna cursed. For a smart as these girls were, they lacked some street sense. "It'll be fine."

"Uh…you sure about that? I mean, I don't want to attract more attention," Amy protested.

"Dammit," Iwasaki came on the radio. "Steal a fucking car and drive it there with your team. Abandon the car there and walk back. It's only a couple kilometers back."

"Are you trying to get us killed?" Amy was getting more upset by the moment. None of this was well planned through at all.

"For fucks sake!" Iwasaki yelled at SAILOR Mercury. He was getting just as irritated as Amy. "Just do it!"

"Yes, sir," was the ice cold response from Amy. Luna came back on the line.

"Did you get all that?"

"Affirmative. I'll go wake SAILOR Moon and Mars up." Amy walked off in a huff, and didn't even tell Luna that she was ending the transmission.

"Confirmed. Luna out," Lt. Kitsune finally said.

Amy stalked across the hall and unlocked the door again, remotely and woke Serena and Raye up.

"Hey you two," she said, shaking Serena. "Wakey wakey, we have a mission to go on."

"Uhhhhh." Serena was still a deep sleeper.

"Serena, get up," Amy repeated. "We have to go on a mission."

"But we just came back from one," she complained.

"Welcome to our new life. We get to kill more bad guys. Come on, get up."

After five minutes of prodding and pleading from Amy (and later, Lita and Mina who joined her to badger Serena and Raye), they got them up.

"Why are we going out again?" Serena asked, annoyed. "Didn't they say in the briefing that there would be a heavy police presence in the area?"

"I don't know," Amy said. "Besides, aren't you supposed to be the leader of this team?"

"Heh," SAILOR Moon replied. "Like I wanted it."

"Come on every one," Mina interrupted. "We have to get to the location."

"Fine, fine. Let me get my weapons and we'll be on our way." Serena tried to get up from the bed, but plopped back down. Amy rolled her eyes and tried to tug her back up.  
"You win," Serena sighed, and got back up. "Did Luna say anything else about this mission?

"We have to use silenced weapons or hand to hand."

"Did we bring any suppressors?" Lita asked. She didn't remember that in the mission plan.  
"No." That was something that Serena did remember.

"They why did they tell us to bring suppressed weapons if we don't have any or even use them in the first place!" Lita asked, irritated.

"I don't know."

"Can't anything else go wrong in this mission?" Raye bitched. She had gotten up and was putting some clothes back on.

"Let's just get this over with." Serena grabbed her purse and put her Glock 26 into it. "Lita, looks like you're going in first."

"Great," Lita replied. "Just what I wanted."

* * *

After leaving the hotel, Amy remotely unlocked a fancy looking 2011 Infiniti G that was parked right outside. The owner thought that she was going to get a valet, but instead, it got stolen.

"Okay, who's driving?" Serena asked.

"I got it," Mina said. Amy got into the passenger's front seat, and everyone else piled into the back.

"God, you're so fat," Raye snapped at Serena. She had the misfortune of getting the middle seat.

"Oh, you're so original," was the reply.

Mina hopped into the driver's seat. "Uh, Amy?"

It was one of those keyless ignition systems.

"Got it."

The car started up in no time. Mina followed the directions on her sunglasses HUD, across the bridge and toward the residential district.

"Heads up," Luna said. "Police roadblock in 100 meters." Mina saw several police cars and patrol officers milling about, checking cars and in general, being a nuisance. However, they did have submachine guns and assault rifles out, and they would quickly become more than a nuisance if the team did anything wrong.

"Is there any way to avoid it?"

"Negative. Do the best you can. Out."

"Amy, you're going to have to do most of the talking here." Mina was stopped now behind several vehicles going through the checkpoint.

"Can't you just talk to them in Japanese? Tell them that you're Japanese tourists or something." Amy wasn't quite sure if pretending if they were locals was a good thing.

"What about the car? We just stole the damn thing." _Dammit, for a want of a nail…_

"Make something up." That was the best Amy could come up with. She popped open the glove compartment and got the registration out.

The car had finally advanced to the checkpoint and an officer came up to the driver's side.

"Fine. Here goes nothing."

She rolled down the window.

"Identification please," the officer said.

"Yes sir." Mina handed them her passport, a fake Japanese driver's license and the registration.

"Ms…Tanazaki?" He butchered the pronunciation on that one. "This car does not belong to you." The officer was very suspicious, but he was new at the job, right out of his draft stint in the army.

"We're borrowing it from a friend. We're just visiting from Japan."

"Really now?" _Not a chance._

"Yes, really. We can call her and she can vouch for us."

The officer looked up from the car. A long line was starting to back up now, with drivers becoming very impatient.

"Call her," the officer told Mina. He didn't believe their story for one second, but the car was a luxury one, with no signs of forced entry or damage.

"Alright." Mina got a burner phone from her purse and called Luna on a secure line. Luna was monitoring the entire situation and half-expected them to call her to get them out of the mess.

"Luna here," she replied on the secure line.

"Hey, Minseo-san, we got stopped at a checkpoint and they want to talk to the owner."

"Got it." Luna pulled up the registration that Amy had been looking at with her eyepiece sunglasses earlier. "Minseo Kim, address Daeyeon-dong, 10505-05, Busan."

"Hello, Miss. Kim? I have a car that belongs to you and that some Japanese people are driving." The officer looked at the line of cars. It was getting longer.

"Yes, that's them. A Miss Tanazaki should be driving." It was fortunate for the team that Luna spoke fluent Korean and Chinese.

"And what's your address?"

"Daeyeon-dong, 10505-05, Busan. My registration number is…" Luna actually hadn't gotten the registration number, but was going to make something up. But the officer didn't ask for it.

"Okay, okay, I believe you. Thank you Miss Kim."

He gave the phone back to them. "Go on, get out of here."

"Thanks officer."  
Mina rolled up the window and drove out of there.

"That was close," Amy said, exhaling finally. "Thanks Luna."

"Not a problem," she replied. Luna pulled up recent police reports in the last hour. The car had not been reported stolen, probably because the owner thought it was in the valet lot.

Several minutes later, the car pulled up a block from the address.

"Okay, the house is on the right side," Luna reported. "It's a grey, two story house."

Amy looked out of the window.

"Advise Luna, they all look like grey, two story houses."

"Copy. I'm going to illuminate the house now."

On the SAILOR team's eyepieces, the house flashed briefly for a second.

"I see it," Serena replied. "We're heading there now."  
They started to get out of the car, when Amy decided to do a scan of the area.

"Hold up," she said to the team. "I see something. Across the street." In another house, there appeared to be a lot of heat, with several people inside of it. There shouldn't be that many people in a house except…

"What is it?" Raye asked.

"Problems," Mercury replied. "Luna, we have a situation here."

"Go ahead."

"Are there and NIS teams in the area?" NIS was the National Intelligence Service, South Korea's infamous descendent of the KCIA, a brutal agency that suppressed freedom and democracy during Park Chung-Hee's military dictatorship during the 1960s, and then onward to the 1980s.

"Standby."

Luna checked radio traffic for the area. Sure enough, several frequencies used by the NIS popped up, and they were busy.

"Affirmative. NIS teams are in the area, monitoring your target."

"Shit," Raye said. "This is getting really complex."

"Luna, can you distract them?" Serena asked. "If we can get them away from this building…"

"I'll try sending an alert message to an empty warehouse across town." Luna broke the encryption code and alerted the NIS units to a suspected terrorist meeting point.

Seconds later, the house was buzzing with activity, and almost all the people left the building, jumping into cars and taking off.

"That's more like it," Amy said. She did another scan. Only two people were in the NIS house now. She counted at least four people in their target location as well.

"Venus." Artemis, who had been pretty silent during this entire operation, called Mina on her line.

"Yeah, go ahead Artemis."

"Why don't you and Amy take out the NIS house and Jupiter, Moon and Mars take out the NK hideout?"

"Sounds good. Did you all hear that?"

The other people nodded. It seemed like the two lightweights were paired up and the heavyweights ("Ha, ha," Serena sarcastically said. "Jokes at my expense,") were paired up as well.

"Let's do it," Artemis said. "Luna, take the second team, I'll take the first one."

"Copy. Terminate the NIS agents, over."

Amy and Mina looked at each other.

"Say again?"

"Terminate the NIS agents, we cannot have any witnesses to who you are."

Mina sighed. This job was going to suck, so hard.

"Got you," Venus replied. "What about the NK cell?"

"Terminate with extreme prejudice."

"Received," SAILOR Moon said. "Let's do this."

Amy and Mina jogged over to the other side of the street while Lita, Serena and Raye hurried to the house on their side.

"They're getting a bit antsy in there," Mercury reported. "Watch yourself, there's one looking out of a window on the second floor, toward the road."

"I see him." Serena ducked behind the house before the one they were supposed to attack, along with the others. "Lita, Raye, go around and find a back entrance. I'll go up and distract these guys."

"I'm on it." Jupiter and Mars snapped around a corner while SAILOR Moon snagged some flowers from a potted plant and approached the door of the house.

* * *

At the same time, Amy and Mina went to the NIS house, wondering what they could do to get the NIS guys out.

"Hey, block all of the radio traffic coming out of this area," Amy asked Luna.

"Done. Be quick about it though, someone is going to get suspicious if they don't hear back from these guys.""

"Roger. We're going in."

Amy walked up to the door and rang the bell. Normally, the NIS agents would have probably shot at her, thinking that she might be an enemy agent or something to that extent. But today, the most junior of the NIS agents were there, and didn't know any better. All the other agents were out on that false alarm.

"Yeah?" said the agent, coming to the door.

"Um…" Amy said. "We're looking for a cat that we lost, have you seen him?" She ruffled in her purse for a picture, but dropped it on purpose, spilling out lipstick, mascara and other things.

"Oh, shit."

"Here, let me help you," the agent said, kindly. He bent down.

Mina clobbered him on the head, and then pushed him into the house, Amy close behind, closing the door behind her. Amy rushed in and went up the stairs, where the other agent was sitting at a computer, monitoring the other house.

"Hey, Kwon?" the agent upstairs asked. "You okay down there?"

He started to get up from his chair and go toward the door, but Mercury knocked him down and got into a fight with him.

Downstairs, Mina apologized to the agent.

"I'm sorry," she said. Venus snapped his neck and then went upstairs to assist her friend.

Amy was knocked across the room by a flying kick from the agent. She just wasn't strong enough to overcome him. He started to pull out his side arm but Venus rushed into the room and slide-tackled him into the wall. She then stomped on his neck, breaking his spine and killing him.

"You okay Amy?" Mercury looked like she had sustained some punishment.

"I'm fine. Let me over to that computer over there and I'll wipe everything clean."

Amy went over to the computer and started to wipe the hard drive, getting rid of everything that the surveillance team had collected in the last day or so. She also uploaded the rest of the data to Luna.

"How do you think the other guys are doing?" Mina asked, watching the house across the street. "I didn't see anyone go in."

* * *

Serena rang the bell on the NK house. No response. She hit the bell again. Again, no response. A third time. This time, a man came to the door, sloppily dressed and in a foul mood.

"What the fuck do you want?!" he asked.  
"Uh…I…uh…" she said in broken Korean. The agent immediately noticed this and tried to shut the door, but SAILOR Moon tossed the flowers at him and dive tackled him.

In the back, Raye and Lita had come across a padlocked door to the back of the house.

"Got a lockpick?" Raye asked Lita.

"Right here." Lita reached up and snapped the lock off with her left arm.

"Nice. Let's go."

Up front, SAILOR Moon was still struggling with the NK agent, who almost got her in a chokehold, but a quick kick to the groin solved that problem quick.

The commotion had brought down the three other agents, who were bringing weapons to bear. The door was behind the stairs, so the agents didn't see Mars or Jupiter come in.

"Gotcha," Mars said. "Get em, Jupiter!"

Jupiter had one of those multi-shot Tasers that police departments wanted, because the original one only had one CO2 cartridge and consequently, could only fire one shot. This one could fire three.

She aimed and fired three times. Two of the shots hit the same guy, while the third hit another. That left just one more.

Raye charged in and knocked the handgun out of the agent's hand just as he was about to shoot SAILOR Moon. She quickly delivered a kick to the stomach and a punch to the jaw, stunning him. She got out a knife from one of the incapacitated agents and then slit the one person she was attacking.

Serena was still in trouble. This agent would not go down, no matter how many times she hit him, he popped back up. That was solved by Raye shanking him in the ribs. He fell down, in pain.

"Wait, wait!" he said to Raye, who was about to slit his throat. "I can give you information!"

"Save it for someone who cares." Raye lifted the knife up and killed him with a stab to the throat.

He gurgled, blood spewing everywhere.

"That's gross. Why did you have to use the knife anyway?" SAILOR Moon, Jupiter and Mars were all now covered in blood.

"Sorry, I thought you said no guns," Mars replied, facetiously.

"Okay, fine, but everyone is going to notice us if we're wearing bloody clothing."

"Hey!"

Amy and Mina had come running across the street.

"Wow, what happened here?" Mina asked. It looked like a Shakespearean play had just concluded; blood was everywhere, four dead men on the floor, and three out of breath women standing above them.

"What do you think?" Lita replied.

"Okay, okay, I get it."

"You guys can't back looking like that," Amy stated.

"Thanks Captain Obvious, we were just talking about that," Serena retorted. "Raye, Lita, go upstairs and get some clothes from upstairs. And a bag if they have one. Amy you go too, try to find some intel."

Raye and Lita ran up the stairs and looked in one of the rooms for some clothes, with Amy right behind. They found some T-shirts and ill-fitting jeans, but that would have to do. Lita poked around and found a duffle bag in a packed closet.

"Hey, Raye, get a load of this."

Raye walked over to where Lita was standing.

"Oh, that's just wonderful."

There were some NK copies of the CZ-75, with attached suppressors.

"Grab those, we might need them." Lita took the bag and the clothes downstairs and changed into them, placing the soiled clothes in the bag.

"Found something," Amy said. She had accessed one of the laptops that the North Koreans had, and it showed a treasure trove of information. The rest of the team gathered around her, looking at what the information said. Amy had hit the "translate" function on her eyepiece, and was (for the most part) translating the words on the information document. Translating real time conversations however, was significantly more difficult and more of a hindrance than a help.

"Damn," Raye said. "These are orders, from Kim Jung-un himself!"

"But they don't specify attacking. It especially forbids combat operations unless the time arises."

"Are you getting this Luna?" Serena asked.

"I'm receiving," she replied. "I don't know the answer to that, break. But we received information from a government source that the NK team was going to go into action within the hour."

"Are you sure about that?" Amy asked. "We searched the house, and we found nothing else but pistols and some body armor. No heavy weapons, no explosives, no nothing. Advise, over."

"Again, intel pointed us to the NK team. That's all I have for you, over."

"Why would they plan an attack?" Lita asked.

"They did have silenced weapons, and they were trained operatives," Amy said. "They didn't need a whole lot to cause chaos. It took quite a while for you to take them down…"

"I guess that makes sense," Mina said. "But we got heavy arms into the country, why not them?"

"We have significantly more resources," Serena pointed out.

"And a Nazi Swiss bank account," Raye added.

"Whatever." Serena took a look around the room they were in. They had gone through everything, and there seemed to be nothing left. "Amy, bring the laptop and destroy whatever you can't carry. We're leaving."

It took two minutes for Amy to wipe the other computers and for the rest of the team to destroy whatever evidence that they had been there. Mina had cleared up the crime scene from the other house, and they all left, getting back into the Infiniti G and driving off.

* * *

"This is KBS News. In an unusual twist, the shooting death of Park Minjun, the CFO for Hyeonjun Heavy Industries came hours before a North Korean special operations cell was found dead in a neighborhood only a short couple of kilometers from where Park Minjun's convoy was ambushed, also presumably by a North Korean commando force. Analysts suspect that a rogue arm of the North Korean military is trying to assert itself on the international scene, and these latest attacks are a result of that rift between North Korea and that rogue group. South Korea is the latest victim in this conflict, with several NIS agents killed when the special operations cell was attacked by the rogue North Korean military section. North Korea maintains that there is not a rift in the military, and that the military remains united, as do the people of North Korea. However, both nations have placed themselves on high alert, and are conducting exercises with civil authorities and law enforcement to ensure that order and safety of the general public is maintained. This has also prompted a massive defense spending increase, and many companies like Hyeonjun Heavy Industries stand to benefit. However, Hyeonjun was slated to be bought out by a Japanese conglomerate, the Nakanishi Group. What this recent spat with the North will entail for Hyeonjun Heavy Industries, South Korea and Nakanishi Group has yet to be determined."

* * *

"Nice parking job," Serena complimented. Mina had parked the Infiniti right where they had found it, in front of the hotel.

"Thanks, I did my best."

The team walked away from the car. Just then, a parking enforcement vehicle came up to it and an officer put a parking ticket on the windshield.

"Well done team." Colonel Iwasaki was addressing the SAILOR group in front of a TV screen, which Amy had hooked up to one of their eyepieces. They were in Jupiter's room, since she was the only one in there.

"The mission was a great success," Luna added. She was standing in the background, along with Artemis.

"I beg to differ," Amy began, but Serena cut her off.

"Thank you very much Colonel, sir. When will we be extracted?"

"Probably in the next twenty four hours or so. We had to push the extraction back due to the recent events, so enjoy yourselves. No Dom Perignon though."

"Understood," Serena said with a smile. "Is there anything else?"

"You have a new mission when you get back."

Everyone groaned, but accepted it. "Thanks Colonel." The line went dead.

"Amy, what are you doing?" Serena snapped.

"That mission was a complete disaster!" she replied. "We had a huge firefight in a crowded, urban area, and then we have to kill off not only a North Korean Special Operations team that had nothing to do with this mission as well as two allies from a nation we're supposed to be at peace with!"

"Amy, why do you have to be a fucking smartass!" Serena spat. "You always have to have an answer for everything, huh? You always gotta be like that mom of yours, right? Right? You blue-haired freak!"

Amy looked like she was about to cry. Serena was looming over her, like a principal admonishing a student.

"Stop it!" Mina shouted. That halted Serena in her tracks.

"Amy has a point. A lot of these things might have been avoided. But you're correct too, we don't need to discuss this right now. So everyone just calm down. When we get back to base, we can discuss things there. Okay?"

Serena stared back at Amy, then to Mina, then back to Amy.

"Fine. When we give back to base, we can discuss it in depth."

Every scurried off back to their rooms; Mina comforting a distraught Amy, Serena and Raye stalking back to theirs. Serena was really pissed off. What was that Amy thinking? Her thinking was completely off the charts and…dammit, there really wasn't much she could do about that. Maybe some more Dom Perigon would make things better.


	20. Chapter XVIII: Namaskara, Bengaluru

**Chapter XVIII: Namaskara, Bengaluru.**

**1420hrs, 5 October 2013, Bangalore, Karnataka, India**

_"Bangalore is a brand the world identifies India with. It is also the single biggest reason why India has become such a hot investment destination." Manmohan Singh._

_"Call centers are magnets for urban Indian youth, providing them with income sometimes greater than their parents,' and a chance to work in an environment filled with young people their age." Mira Kamdar, Planet India._

* * *

"Nakanishi Support Line, this is John speaking, how may I assist you?"

This was Sudhir "John" Reddy's life at the moment. He was a Customer Service Representative for Nakanishi Group, India, and all he did was field calls from America, dealing with one dumb question after another. At least he was on the day shift, and there weren't a lot of calls coming in. But there were some crazies on the phone though. The Nakanishi HQ here used to belong to another MNC before their building got bought out by Nakanishi, and now bright skylights and huge windows "helped" to improve worker productivity and make the workload a bit more tolerable.

"Hey, my computer fizzed out on me. Can you help me with it?" This was one of those dumb questions.

"Can you describe the problem in greater detail, sir?" It was taking calls like these that really tried Sudhir's patience.

"It…just winked out on me. I don't know what the problem is."

"It just winked out on me," meant a few things. First, "I was looking at porn and I got this virus/trojan/malware." Second, "I was torrenting something and I got this virus/trojan/malware". Third, "I clicked on one of those adverts that everyone on the internets knows NOT to click on and I got a virus/trojan/malware." More than likely though, it was the first one.

"Sir, I can't really help you if you don't describe the problem in depth."

"Look, it just went out on me, I don't know what went wrong, I can't really give you much else because I don't know a damn thing. That's why I called you!"

Sudhir sighed again. He looked at this watch. 1430hrs. Three more hours and he could be out of here. If he survived though.

"Alright, I'm going to perform a remote access from my computer to see what's wrong." At least he had the remote access tools that had been provided by the company when they sold the computer to that particular customer.

Just as he had suspected, the person in question had been looking at porn and using torrents. There was a lot of malware and trojans, which was probably the reason for his computer "winking out".

"Okay, I'm going to do a virus scan and remove all of this stuff from your computer." Sudhir just used Malwarebytes and that was it. Problem solved and he got paid.

"Thank a lot, it's working much better now."

"You're welcome sir."

The customer hung up and Sudhir took a deep breath. It was finally over…for now. He would probably get a call in about two minutes or so, but that was then and now he could relax.

"Sudhir."

A voice snapped him out of his thoughts. _Shit, just when I was thinking about getting out of here._

"Hey, what's up Sudhir," his boss, Dilip Desai, or "D.D" as he liked to call himself. He was from Punjab, a state up north much to the ire of all the workers, who were hired from South India. He insisted on talking in Punjabi or Hindi at every opportunity and refused to at least communicate with his other workers in proper English, stating that "Why can't they speak Punjabi? A real man can speak it, so why can't all you?"

Most of the workers did speak Hindi and English, but they preferred to use Kannada, Telugu (in Sudhir's case, he was from Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh), Tamil or Malayalam, all of which were native languages to South India. South India, consists of four states, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerela. Each of them has their own language (Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam, respectively), their own culture, their own political parties, and their mutual dislike of North India coming in and forcing their own culture and language onto them. When Hindi was proposed as the formal language of India, Tamil Nadu threw a wrench in that process by backing Urdu, which is spoken by Muslims in India.

Although similar to Hindi, the only reason why South India backed Urdu was so that Hindi…Would. Not. Be. The. Official. Language. Period. And so, Hindi and English are only the defacto official languages of government (and with twenty two other languages reaching official status), with road signs and government offices being written in Hindi and English everywhere else in India but ohhh noo. No no no no. Not in South India. No siree, Kannada/Telugu/Tamil/Malayalam was coming on top of the sign, then English, then (maybe) Hindi at the bottom in really small lettering.

Speaking Hindi in the South will get you dirty looks, bad service, dropped calls, missing shoes and the inevitable response from someone saying in Kannada/Telugu/Tamil/Malayalam that, "We do not speak Hindi here." Although, some states (read, Tamil Nadu) have been more…enthusiastic about defending the purity of their own language than others, and that lead to more bickering and arguing in South India. And so the cycle continued.

"What do you want, D.D?" Other than annoying questions from inane customers, D.D was the other massive cog in the machine that was Sudhir's pathetic life.

"Yeah, well, I was wondering if you could come in this weekend."

"It is already the weekend, sir."

"Oh…is it?" It was really easy to lose track of days in a call center. "Well, um, yeah, I meant this weekend, as in tomorrow."

"This is because…?" Sudhir really did not want to work another full weekend.

"Yeah, ah, the boss of Nakanishi Asia, this, 'Jadeite' person, is going to be coming in to take a tour of the India operation. We need all hands on deck for this one."

Sudhir sighed. _This is just what I needed. Some super patsy guy from Japan coming in to tell us how to do our jobs. Wonderful._

"Do I get extra pay?"

"Of course, two times."

"Fine, I'll do it." The extra money would buy some alcohol, which would dull the pain after work.

"Yeah, great. See you then!"

Sudhir watched D.D leave for the next cubicle, and then leaned forward, head in hands in frustration. There went another two weeks of his life, out the window. At least he was luckier than some of the other people who worked in the building; the janitors, the chaiwallas, the security guards. Most of them lived in some of the slum areas in Bangalore, right outside where he lived…probably. Nowhere was there a stark contrast as a slum next to a sky-rise apartment as in India. It was just how things went. And besides, in Bangalore, it wasn't nearly as bad as Mumbai or New Delhi.

"Sudhir," another voice taunted him.

"What do you want, Mercy?" Sudhir responded, a bit frustrated.

"Hey, we're all suffering here," his next-door…uh…cubicle-mate replied, cheerfully. She leaned back in her chair to see him.

Mercy Abraham was a recent graduate from Bangalore University. She was a very dark skinned person, from Kerala, and most definitely not in line with the image that many Indians wanted to see; a fair skinned woman with nice eyes and a little bit of curves. Not like how the Americans wanted to see their women, all polished and sterile, no life at all behind all the makeup and photoshopping. Nah, all Indians wanted was just to bleach the skin, soften the eyes a little bit, change the way that the woman stood, talked, and acted toward her husband and other men…totally not hypocritical at all. Nope.

Mercy's name also automatically marked her as a Christian (Syrian Orthodox, to be exact), although most people didn't have much of a problem with that in India. Not until it came to marriage time.

"So, you get more porn watchers today?" She twirled a pen around.

"Yeah, three or four. I wonder how they find time to watch such things if they can get laid so easily."

"That's just TV Sudhir," Mercy joked. "America isn't like that."

"Well, you would know, Ms. Smartypants," Sudhir shot back. "You've been there."

"Hey, it was only once, and that was like, three years ago when I went on a study abroad trip."

"To where?"

"Some college in Minn…Minn…uh…Minnesota, yeah, that's what it was called."

"Minnesota? Isn't that in Canada?" Sudhir didn't really know U.S states very well. Then again, neither did most Americans.

"No, I'm sure it's in America. It was really cold there. Like, negative forty and such, you know?"

"Forty what? Celsius, or Fahrenheit?"

"When it's that cold, it doesn't matter."

"That's true."

"Hey you two." It was D.D again, looking from the observation room on the second floor, where all the bigwigs lorded over their subjects. He had pressed the push to talk function on his phone when he was communicating with workers. "Get back to work."

"I'm going, I'm going," Sudhir replied. He gave one last glance at Mercy, who smiled and leaned back to her desk.

* * *

Jadeite flew into Bangalore International Airport a couple of hours later.

"Please make sure that your entrance forms are all filled out and handed to the immigration official as you leave the airport," one of the stewardess said as they filed off the British Airways Boeing 747.

Jadeite had always had problems flying, especially on those 747s; they gave him a bad case of motion sickness and he spent most of the flight knocked out under the effects of Dramamine. He had only been woken up by their landing and the reminder to have his entrance forms all filled out.

He sighed and checked his shirt pocket. Passport, immigration forms, everything. Thank god. He really hated coming to this country. It was so dirty and loud, compared to Japan or even China. But it was a growing market and they had to have an operations center here for their business in America, or else they would fall behind. Beryl would not like that at all. Besides, many American companies were leaving and taking their operations to China, Thailand, or even the Philippines, where the colonial legacy of America still held sway. More space for them, and none of the competition, at least from them. That just left the native Indian industries, protected by law and tariffs, and maybe that would hold off the tide of international trade for awhile, but sooner or later…

"Are you here for business or leisure?" the customs official asked.

"Business," Jadeite replied. The official looked at the passport a little bit more carefully. The visa was good until next year…no alerts on this passport…everything checked out.

"Thank you, have a nice stay here."

Jadeite just smiled and put his passport away. He couldn't wait to get out of here.

The chartered car was waiting outside by the pickup terminals, past police officers armed with ancient Sterling submachine guns. It was almost kind of pathetic, really. After some more shuffling, Jadeite went to a man holding a sign that said, "Mr. Jadeite." They finally spelled the name right after all this time.

"Sir," the man said, saluting. He was wearing a khaki uniform, neatly pressed and ironed. Indians liked doing that in formal settings, even if they weren't military. They did it British-style, yet another colonial legacy, palm facing outward, unlike the Americans or Germans, whose salute was palm down, slightly angled. "Are you Mr. Jadeite, sir?"

"That's me." He showed him his passport.

"Of course, sir. I'll take your bags." He reached for them and put them in the trunk of the Hindustan Motors Ambassador that they driving to the Hotel Atria, in downtown Bangalore.

Jadeite climbed into the backseat, and they started off for the hour long journey toward the middle of the city. If this were any other country, the journey might have taken about thirty minutes, but in India? Forget about it. It might take hours to drive ten or twenty kilometers.

Thankfully, this was not one of those days. In two hours, Jadeite was safely in his hotel room, ready to start a new day.

Suddenly, his mobile phone rang. He swiped the screen to answer.

"Yeah, this is Jadeite."

"Jadeite, this is Beryl." Her voice was silky and sexy, but there was a hint of urgency in her voice. "How was your flight?"

"It was good Beryl. As good as coming to this infernal country can be."

"Now now, don't be a downer," Beryl said. She did agree with him, but there was business to be done and wherever the money was, she would go. "You're visiting our operations at Manyata Tech Park. A driver will take you there tomorrow at 0900. They'll be waiting for you there. Make sure that they're all doing a good job, I know that some of these Indians can be lazy and not be as efficient as us Japanese. But cost is cost, and paying one Japanese person to do the work of five, ten, maybe fifteen well educated, motivated and trained Indian employees was an opportunity that we cannot pass up."

Jadeite sighed. Beryl was right on this account.

"Of course Beryl. Have a nice day."

"You too!" She hung up.

"Fuck."

* * *

"Okay, here he comes." Sudhir looked out of his cubicle at the man stalking down the rows of employees. He was a nice looking man, with short hair and a commanding presence.

"What do you think of him?" Mercy whispered over the cubicle wall.

"Dunno. He looks like all the other Japanese men that have come through here." It was always Japanese men, never women.

"He's kind of cute."

"…and this is part of our call center." D.D's heavily accented English penetrated the hustle and bustle of the workers.

"They seem…very busy." Jadeite, for as smart as he was, couldn't catch a hint sometimes. What D.D wanted Jadeite to say was, "Yes, this is your call center, how is your performance here, etc". Instead, Jadeite and D.D were walking around in awkward silence. Awkward to D.D anyway, but not to Jadeite.

"So, boss," D.D said to Jadeite. "What are you thinking about the recent attacks on CEOs?"

Jadeite looked at D.D, but said nothing.

"Sorry boss."

It was a couple of minutes before they came over to Sudhir's cubicle. Sudhir pretended to do work, instead of the solitaire that he usually played on a slow day.

"Excuse…me." Jadeite's English was better than most Japanese, but still a bit hard to understand.

"Yes sir."

Jadeite examined Sudhir's cubicle. It was a standard one, with one and a half meter high walls and measuring about eight cramped square meters. There were few personal items there; company policy forbid most of those items anyway.

"What…do you do here?"

"I answer calls from North America, diagnose and fix any problems that they might have with our products."

"Which products do you get the most complaints about?" Now that was a legit question, and it surprised Sudhir for a second before continuing.

"Well, we get the most complaints about our PCs and Laptops. Most of the time though, it is user error rather than the fault of our company. Sometimes it is dealing with software, but those are mostly companies and those calls are few and far between."

Jadeite stared at Sudhir for a second, then nodded in agreement.

"I am pleased that…this is going very well then. We have good products."

More silence.

"Er…" Sudhir didn't really know what to say. Suddenly, his phone started ringing. "I'm sorry sir, but I must take this."

Jadeite nodded, but did not move. He wanted to see the solutions process in action.

"Nakanishi Support Line, this is John, how may I assist?"

"Yeah, my name is Georgia Clemens, and my computer is running really slow today. It was working fine yesterday and now it's barely moving."

"Do you have remote access on your computer ma'am?" _Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes._

"I do. This is a personal computer, the T800 series that just came out. I don't understand what's going on."

"Alright ma'am, I'm accessing it now."

Sudhir turned on the remote accessing tools. It took a long, long time before her GUI popped up and showed him the problem.

There was none.

"What the…" There was no malware, spyware, viruses, nothing. Some tracking cookies, but everyone had those, and that wouldn't slow down this computer that much. Something else was wrong. Maybe it was a hardware problem?

He checked the program manager. There was something there…he didn't recognize the program, but it had all the markings of a program developed by Nakanishi. It was sending out packets of information to somewhere...

Sudhir checked behind him. Jadeite was still there, but D.D was talking inanely to him, irritating the hell out of him. He looked somewhat distracted.

"Okay, let's try this." He ran a simple traceroute command on the outgoing packets. Starting off from a wireless network in Alexandria, VA, then a ISP in Arlington, another address in Mclean, another ISP in Springfield, then Fredericksburg…then the packets suddenly came to a stop in…Orange, VA? It was from an IP address that was allocated to the IPv6 block that Nakanishi Group America had bought when IPv6 was rolled out en masse.

The connection was suddenly terminated.

_Oh shit, somebody from Nakanishi is spying on this person. Who is she?_

"Hey, my computer is running faster again!" Georgia's voice brought him out of his panicked state of mind. "Thanks a whole bunch."

"Um, ma'am?" Sudhir took a deep breath. "What is your profession?"

"Say what?"

"What is your profession?"

"Uh…I'm a representative in the US Congress, if you must know."  
_Oh my god, Nakanishi is spying on members of the US Government. I am in such deep shit right now._

"Thank you ma'am." Sudhir was doing all he could to remain calm. "I was simply recording information for our database." Never in his life had Sudhir lied so bad.

"Well, you can put it down right, there. Georgia Clemens, US Representative from Georgia!"

"Thank you. Is there anything else that we can do?"

"Everything is working fine on this end. I don't think there's nothing more that needs to be done. Thanks so much."

"You're welcome ma'am. Have a nice day." Georgia hung up.

"Very well done." Jadeite had swatted away D.D's stupid conversation on cricket and how it was so much better than baseball and was looking at the results of the call on Sudhir's screen. "The call only took about four minutes to complete. I am impressed by your work."

"Thank you sir." Sudhir was using all of his energy to not freak out and panic.

"Indeed." With that, Jadeite left, along with D.D, who didn't even acknowledge the work that Sudhir had done. He would try to take credit for it, but Jadeite knew better. Even if he didn't like India or Indians, he knew good work when it was being done.

* * *

"Jesus," Sudhir said later to Mercy in the cafeteria later that day. "I thought that would never end."

"Hey, watch your language." They were eating some curry, but this was completely different that Japanese style curry. It was more runny, more spicy, and definitely no meat in it.

"Oh sorry."

"I had to miss church today because of this job," she moaned. "And that Jadeite guy gave me a hard time as well. Said that I couldn't work as nearly as well as you."

"Did he now?"

"Yeah. The guy is completely sexist."

Sudhir kept looking down at his food. He was still troubled by the events surrounding Representative Clemens' computer.

"Something troubling you?" Mercy asked.

Sudhir sighed. "Yeah. Something really big, but I don't want you to get involved."

Mercy would have put her hand on his, but that really wasn't allowed in this environment. "What's up?"

"Okay, so when Jadeite came by and looked at my work today…somebody called in with their computer on the blink."

"Who was it?"

"Well, that's the thing. It was a representative of the US Congress."

Mercy reacted with surprise. "Wow, that must be important."

"It really wasn't. But the thing is…"

He hesitated. But he had to go on.

"Somebody was watching her computer. From a Nakanishi owned IP address. I did a simple traceroute on the program before they cut me off."

Mercy leaned back in her chair, and then looked around the room. It was packed, but no one was listening to them, engaged in their own conversations.

"That's serious. Someone from the Nakanishi Group is spying on a US Congressperson."

"Do you think I should tell someone?"

Mercy looked around the room again.

"No."

Sudhir looked at her. "What?"

"Do you think that D.D is going to do anything about it? If Nakanishi is doing something illegal, they'll do anything to keep it quiet. And if it means getting rid of you, then they will do that."

Sudhir stared at Mercy. "How do you know all of this?"

Mercy smiled weakly. "Look, I just know, I have this gut feeling, okay? If you want to do something, alert this representative and tell her to look into it. She has much more power than both of us."

That did make sense. "Alright. I'll contact her somehow."

"Sounds good. Now eat up, we still have half our shift left to do."

* * *

"You…have a very good operation here," Jadeite said to that sycophant D.D as he walked out of the building. "Please continue the good work."

"I appreciate it," D.D replied. This could mean a pay raise, or even a promotion!

"I will be in contact." He turned to leave, but thought of something that he had almost forgotten to mention to D.D.

"Mr. Desai."

"Yes Boss?" D.D replied enthusiastically.

"Remember what I told you to do on the 16th? Now that Mr. Chung is not here to be your contact, I am taking a big risk coming here and telling you this. Please, do not fail me."

With that, Jadeite left.

D.D was left standing there, wondering why he had to be so cryptic all the time. Japanese people were so weird sometimes, and unlike the Chinese, they didn't seem to explain themselves very well.

Oh well, you couldn't win them all. But at least he had passed that section of the test. Now time to get those lazy employees back to work.

Back in his car, Jadeite wished the driver could hurry up, but there was more traffic than usual and they were stuck.

He really needed to get out of this country. Everything was fine, nothing to see here.

Except for one small piece of business that he needed to take care of.


	21. Chapter XIX: I have a dream…

**Chapter XIX: I have a dream…**

**1230hrs, 6 October 2013, Alexandria, Virginia**

_"I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together." Martin Luther King_

* * *

Representative Georgia Clemens was glad that her computer was fixed now. She could finally get around to reading those emails from her constituents. She was in her modest Alexandria loft apartment, resting after a marathon day of special sessions, meetings, lunches and more meetings.

She clicked on the online email server that was run by her office, and was inundated with emails. A lot of them were spam that had somehow made it past the filter, but several of them were from the same person, unhappy with her adding the new Nakanishi corporate office in her district that would completely destroy a popular park that was visited by many of her constituents.

"Junk…conspiracy theorist….junk…junk….conspiracy theorist."

Georgia was about to give up on the emails until she came across one that read "From a concerned technician."

"Who could that be from?" It didn't really concern her all that much, but considering that it was not in all caps and wasn't demanding anything in the subject header of the email, this actually might be a legit thing.

She clicked on it.

"Representative Clemens. I am from a company that you have contacted in the last couple of days for computer technical support. Although I am grateful for your business, I have discovered some disturbing details about your computer. When I was remote accessing your computer, I discovered that the North American branch of Nakanishi was monitoring your computer from a location in Orange, VA. I do not believe that spying on elected members' computers is the right of large corporations, and I am alerting you to this fact because I do not want any more harm to come to you and your continued work as an elected official. I am attaching log files of these events so that you may see the proper authorities about this.

Sincerely, A Concerned Technician."

Georgia looked at the email with a little disbelief. It would make sense that Nakanishi would be monitoring her, but this person was taking a huge risk by sending her this information. She didn't even know this person's name. Well, she knew who "John" was, but that wasn't really helpful at all.

"Dammit." Those lobbyists from Nakanishi came by her office every week to make sure that she was staying in line. Instead of serving her people, she was serving the interests of the Nakanishi Group. Every day, she woke up and thought that it was worse than the last one, because the lobbyists needed this or that, and they promised compensation, of course, but that wasn't why she was there. Not at all.

She picked up her smartphone and looked at her contacts. Representative O'Conner was still there. She barely talked to him nowadays, and he seemed down, depressed, and outright drunk most days. But this was something that had to be done.

Georgia dialed O'Conner. It took him thirty seconds to pick up the phone.

"Yeah. Whadda want?"  
"Charles? Charles, it's me. Georgia."

"Georgia who? Oh yeah, Georgia who got shot at with me." He sounded completely out of it.

"Charles, look, I know you've been having some trouble as of late, but could you meet me in Alexandria?" He took forever to respond.

"And why would I do that?"

"I'll buy you a Bacon Cheeseburger at Five Guys."

That was a bribe that Representative O'Conner couldn't resist.

"Oh fine, I'll be there."

Twenty minutes later, they were at one of the original Five Guys restaurants in Alexandria.

O'Conner looked like shit. He showed up in his undershirt, stained with grease and whisky, and was wearing equally stained sweatpants.

"So, why did you drag me all the way out here? Cause I know you don't like to eat these burgers here," he said, juices spilling everywhere.

It took a second for Georgia to respond.

"Charles, look…it has to do with the Nakanishi Group."

O'Conner immediately put down the burger. "Fuck," he snarled. "Those guys again? I don't want to ever do anything concerning that ever again."

He stood up to leave but Georgia stopped him

"Charles, please," she hissed. "This is really important."

He tried to shrug her off. "That's what you said last time."

Georgia only tightened her grip. "Goddammit Charles, look at yourself. You're a mess, a disgrace to your office. Now are you going to listen to me, or are you going to run away like the coward you are?"

O'Conner looked at her, then sat back down. "If you weren't a lady," he said. "I would have punched you halfway across this room by now. Nobody calls me a coward."

"Well then, listen to this." She told him of the story of her computer, the technician who helped her, and then the email that he sent.

"Shit man," O'Conner said. "That's why my computer has been running so slow as well. Even on a government network, it's been compromised by the Nakanishi Group."

"Charles." Georgia looked at him. "This has to stop. We need to tell somebody or else this will spread to everyone in Congress, if it hasn't already. I don't really care to work for Nakanishi, and neither do you."

Representative O'Conner stared up at the ceiling. He was going to risk it all…again. They had gotten close to that plant in Orange, Virginia, but then things had gotten bad from there. Nakanishi lobbyists emailed him, pestered him, came by his office often to "remind" him of their presence. He was tired of being a lapdog for them, and all he wanted was to stab them where it hurts.

There was one last thing he could do.

"Georgia," he said. "I'm going to call in all the favors that I can. Some people still owe me, and I guess if I want to go out, I might as well as do it in style."

"Let me…"

"No." O'Conner stopped Georgia midsentence. "This is something that I have to do by myself. Otherwise, you'll be dragged deeper into this mess and I'm not going to pull you down with me. My career is over. If I'm going down, I'm going to do it on my terms. Send those log files to this email address."

He pulled out his cell phone and started dialing.

* * *

"Well, that could have gone better."

Senator Gloria Patterson (Democrat-Pennsylvania), was the chair of the very powerful Senate Committee on Finance, but that meant most days were a hassle. Especially when she had to meet with the president. Everyone wanted money for their junkets, their pet projects, their own offices, for this, that and the other. To make it worse, she was in charge of funding Medicare AND Medicaid, the third rail of American Politics. Cutting funding from either of those programs would bring the wrath of voters among her, and she would be quickly out of a job.

"Oh come on, you the president has a soft spot for you," replied her counterpart, Ranking Member Senator James Plum (Republican-Texas).

"Just because we're both women, doesn't mean we don't bitch at each other." Patterson poked at her iPhone. "Dammit, in that thirty minutes we were in there, I got one-hundred emails."

"Hey, that's nothing," said Plum, taking out his smartphone. "I got over three hundred."

"That's madness." She continued walking down the hall of the West Wing, toward the exit when her screen showed that she had an incoming phone call.

"Oh dammit," she muttered.

"What is it?" Plum asked.

"It's him."

"Shit, that Rep you were…"

"Don't remind me." She sighed and swiped to answer the call. "Go on without me, I'll hail a cab or something."

"Alright, take care now." Plum walked on down the hall, leaving Patterson to talk on the phone.

"Hello, Charles," she icily said into the phone.

"Hello, Senator," was the equally cold response.

"What do you want?" This was the last thing that Patterson needed at the moment. "I'm very busy, doing important things. Unlike you."

"You're going to want to hear this," he said.

"Oh really? And what is it that's going to make me drop everything that I'm doing right now, including managing the funds for an entire country?"

"Two words. Nakanishi Group."

Senator Patterson sucked in a breath. She could really go for a smoke right now, but her PR specialist told her to quit. It sent a bad impression to her constituency, but she didn't give a fuck.

"Charles, don't bug me with those guys right now," she said. "I'm up to my elbows in lobbyists."

"I might have something on them. But you're going to have to meet me, I can't discuss it on the phone."

One thing that she knew about Charles O'Conner is that when he had something to give, it was really important. He wasn't the type of guy to give bad information. In bed however…

"You got me. Where and when?"

"King Street Metro Station, ASAP."

"I'll be there."

It wasn't hard to jump onto the Metro rail, and take a ride down to Alexandria. She travelled without security, even though most of her colleagues did so some out of the need for protection, but mostly out a need to inflate the ego a bit. The Capitol Police did do a good job of that.

Despite all the dysfunction that happened inside of the Beltway, the one thing that (seemed) to work smoothly was the Metro system. Still, the trip took about forty minutes in total, from the White House to the King Street Metro Station.

He was waiting for her as the Metro pulled up.

"Caution, the doors are opening." The doors opened up and she stepped out to meet O'Conner.

"Charles."

"Gloria." The two of them stared at each other for a second, their breath puffing out in little clouds in the crisp fall day.

"I assume you have something for me?" she asked in an impatient tone. "This better be worth the forty minutes I spent travelling on the Metro."

"Yes. I do."

He repeated the story that Georgia had told him.

"Jesus," Patterson said. "I really wasn't expecting that."

"There's something else to it though."

"What?" Patterson took some cigarettes out and started smoking one. Screw the PR department.

"I thought you quit."

"Nah. Anyway, go on."

O'Conner took a deep breath, inhaling the secondhand smoke. "Okay. So Georgia and I decide to check out something dealing with the Nakanishi Group in Orange…"

"In Orange? That's two hours from here. What's there?"

"I'm getting to that. The Nakanishi Group has been coming up a lot in our hearings, and Georgia dug a bit further. She found that the Nakanishi Group owned both a beef farm in Japan, a shipping company, and a couple of beef processing plants in the United States. Beef was being shipped to the US, but there wasn't any cattle at their farm."

"And Nakanishi is a tech and banking group, not really related to the food industry." Patterson knew all too well about the long reach of that particular company, but the food industry? That was a really big stretch.

"Exactly. Georgia found that they owned a beef processing plant in Orange, VA. So we took a drive down there and…"

O'Conner paused for a second.

"You okay, Charles?" Patterson asked. She hadn't seen him like this…well, not since he had gotten back from 'Nam.

"I'm fine. I parked across from the plant and waited for a bit. Then some guys in SUVs came by with an eighteen wheeler and started unpacking it. But the thing is, they were all carrying guns and whatever they were unloading, it wasn't beef. Then…then they shot at us."

Patterson put a hand over her mouth. No wonder O'Conner had been in a foul mood for such a long time now.

"It gets even better. When we got back to DC, Nakanishi lobbyists were there to meet us. They threatened to 'leak' incriminating evidence that me and Georgia were having…intimate relations. I've been pestered by Nakanishi ever since."

"Dammit Charles," Patterson said. She leaned closer to him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"Because…you know. Our history together isn't all that good. And you still have a great career ahead of you, in that Finance Committee stuff. You don't need an embarrassment like me to ruin everything that you've worked for."

She sighed. O'Conner was right, and she knew it. But she could also see that he was backed into a corner and that he was trying to do something right.

"I can look into the matter further," she said. "I don't know what I can do, or how far I can take this, but every day the Nakanishi Group gets more power, more subsidies and even with the power I have, they're just too great."

"Thanks Gloria." He hugged her.

"You're welcome Charles," she replied. "I just wish…"

"Don't. Stop wishing for me and let's take down what they have planning."

She pulled back from O'Conner.

"I guess you're right. I'll go and talk to the president…or somebody soon about this matter, but again, my powers are limited on this."

"That's all I ask."

"Please stand clear, the Metro is approaching the station."

O'Conner and Patterson both looked at the incoming train. "I guess you'd better take that one," he said to her.

"Thanks. I'll be in touch."

She wanted so bad to lean in and kiss them, but like he said, those times were over. The Metro arrived and she boarded the train, looking at him all the while.

* * *

O'Conner stared at Patterson as she left. "Those were some good times," he said to no one in particular.

"That's nice to hear," a voice said behind him.

_Shit. Time to face the music, _he thought to himself. He turned around.

The three lobbyists from before were there (LAME, SAM, and HAL) along with several burly looking men. There was also a thin, tall man with long brown hair standing with them as well.

"Mr. O'Conner," LAME said to him.

"That's Representative O'Conner," he corrected.

"Representative O'Conner," LAME replied, with that stupid smile of his. "I think all of this information that you've been telling…certain people is against what we agreed upon a couple of months ago."

"I really don't give a fuck," he spat back. "Whatever you people are planning, it's not good. And you need to be stopped."

The tall, thin man stepped forward and looked at him. "Hmph," was his only word for a little bit.

"Cat got your tongue?" O'Conner mocked.

"Not really."

"So, care to tell me your name? Unlike your lackeys over there?"

"Maxfield Stanton."

O'Conner could barely keep from laughing out loud. "Really? That's your name? Did you get it from 'As the World Turns?' Or 'All my Children?' Maybe even 'Guiding Light'?"

"Please, Mr…"

"Again, that's Representative O'Conner, to you." He was going to drag this out as much as he could. This was kind of fun, to be honest.

"Representative O'Conner," Maxfield said. "You are in no position to be making jokes, let alone demands. I thought that my lobbyists would make it clear to you that you were to forget about your investigation into Nakanishi Group operations."

"Well, maybe you can clear this up for me then." O'Conner cleared his throat, and then reached in his coat pocket. Several of the burly men flinched and reached underneath their blazers.

"Calm down boys. Just some whisky." He pulled out his trusty flask and took a pull from it. He did have a gun underneath there too, even though it was against DC law, but hey, he didn't give a fuck.

"So, I get to thinking, what do I have to lose if I reveal you? Tell some people that you shot at me, and another member of Congress? I have no career left, thanks to your constant inference, and now you threaten me with your 'roid rage bodyguards and your threats to expose that 'affair' you keep on about with Georgia. You could have done that a long time ago. Then I realized today, I don't have anything to lose. At all. So that's why I'm telling people. Powerful people, that you don't own, or will ever buy out."

He took another swig. "So fuck you. Fuck your corporation. Fuck your money. Cause I have nothing, I mean, nothing to lose now."

LAME stepped forward to rebuke O'Conner, but Maxfield stopped him.

"Representative O'Conner," he replied. "You are clearly drunk. I think it would be best that you went home and forgot that this ever happened."

"Well, screw you!" He tossed his flask at Maxfield, but he dodged it easily. It did however, clobber LAME in the face.

"Hey!" LAME was really pissed off and motioned for the bodyguards to move forward but again, Maxfield stopped them.

"We'll be going now. I assure you, this will be your last chance. I am willing to let this one slide because, well, you're not in a right state of mind."

"Heh. That's what you think. Wait until Gloria goes to the president and tells her all of this."

"With what evidence? Those log files that Georgia sent to her will never reach her. And even if they did, we've scrambled her hard drive so that she actually needs a new computer now."

O'Conner sucked in a deep breath. _I knew it was too easy. Oh well. Nice try…again. Maybe on the third time._

"Glad to see we have mutual understanding. Have a good day."

* * *

"What do you mean, they turned you down?" Georgia had called O'Conner after she had come home to a fried computer.

"It didn't work. Gloria won't get the email that you sent her, and she'll have nothing to present to the president. She can only relay second-hand testimony at best, and with everything else she's got on her plate at the moment, it won't be enough for her to start an inquiry on the Nakanishi Group."

"Dammit," Georgia said. "It's just like last time. Me and my big fat mind, thinking I could change something."

"Kid, you did good," O'Conner replied. He was still standing at King Street Station, watching the people go by. The lobbyists HAL and SAM had pestered him after his altercation with Maxfield, only leaving when he threatened to do something really drastic, like throw himself in front of an oncoming Metro train.

"I just wish that it had worked this time around," Georgia complained. "We're on to something, something that is really big, much larger than…the Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Subcommittee."

She laughed at hearing herself say that. "God, I wish sometimes I had never run for office."

"Well, you would have never had the chance to hang out with an old fart like myself."

"That's true. We'll get em though."

"I don't know kid," O'Conner said, more seriously now. "There are some battles that can't be won, and there's nothing I can do after this. Maybe go to the press, but I'm just going to bide my time. Perhaps something will come up, and I can get back at these guys for sticking all these lobbyists on me."

"I'm sorry for getting you into this. If I hadn't had dug deeper…" She sighed. This was completely bullshit.

"Hey, now, don't beat yourself over this. If not you, then someone else, and someone who might be more expendable than a Representative of Congress. We still have some power, and I'm going to use every ounce of it I have left to finish this. But for now, stay low. They don't know who they're dealing with. We can't be bought out or threatened."

"Alright. See you tomorrow in session."

"You too."

* * *

Senator Patterson had just gotten back to her office when she saw the three lobbyists there. She recognized them, but always forgot their names.

"Senator," LAME said. "We need to talk."

"Don't have the time for you," Patterson tersely replied to him.

"I think you do," HAL stated, stepping in front of her, blocking her access to her office.

Patterson looked at them.

"Do you realize what you're doing? I'm a Senator, for crying out loud."

LAME stepped forward. "We know about O'Conner and his plans. So, drop it."

"Or what?"

"I don't think your husband would appreciate it if he found out that you were engaged in an affair with Representative O'Conner some time ago."

Patterson sighed. It always came back to that. The only other person who knew about that was Senator James Plum, and he kept his mouth shut when it came to that kind of stuff.

"Goddammit, what do you people want out of us!" she snarled. The bitchy side of her was starting to come out, and it was going to get nasty.

"Come now, Senator, we just need some space to operate," SAM told her. "We just want to be left alone."

"Oh, I haven't heard that one before," Patterson shot back. "I know you. You've been trying to buy out all of Congress so you can operate with impunity so you can get favorable pieces of legislation passed. You haven't bought out me, and I don't intend to be a corporate toady."

"Look," LAME said to her. "Be reasonable. What are you going to tell the president? Or the police? Or whatever authority that you plan to go to? That a drunk and aging representative got shot at by Nakanishi employees? Please. There's no evidence."

"Well, I'm going to get some info very soon…"

"No, I don't think so," SAM said. "Georgia won't be sending emails from her computer anytime soon now."

Patterson frowned intensely. She was backed into a corner and there was no way to get out. This time anyway.

"I'm glad that you understand our position," LAME said, a smile on his face. "Please refrain from any more rash actions…especially involving former lovers. Have a nice day to you."

She glared at them as they left her office door. This was ridiculous…a US Senator being threatened by sleazy lobbyists working for a corporation that had something devious going on. But what was it?


	22. Chapter XX: The Little Red Book

**Chapter XX: The Little Red Book.**

**1823hrs, 6 October 2013, Sagayapura, Bangalore, India**

_"How can I think of the future if I cannot even put food on the table tomorrow?" Anonymous Villager, Koppal District, Karnataka, India._

_"The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them." Quotations of Chairman Mao Zedong._

* * *

Beyond all the glitter of the skyscrapers and the apartments, there lived the poor people of Bangalore. Again, they weren't as bad off as some might be in Mumbai or Delhi or Kolkata, but it was still bad to be poor here. The fact that it was "only" ten percent slums added to the sense of a less poverty stricken area.

Jadeite had asked his driver to drop him off near Hennur Road and Gospel Street. He took out two duffle bags from the boot and started walking down the street.

From up above, if you looked at it from Google Maps or something like that, the neighborhood in Sagayapura didn't look so bad. But if you looked at it from the ground, it told a completely different story. A road named "Tannery Road," wouldn't even get a glance in the West, but here, that meant the unclean people lived there. They weren't even people, but nonhumans, people who ate meat, who skinned the cows that had died, made and processed the leather hide, polluted themselves and those around them with sin. Supposedly. They weren't any worse than normal people, but these were the Untouchables, the people outcast by society. They had dark skin, gaunt eyes, bellies empty and growling due to hunger, calloused feet and hands. They did the work that no one else wanted to do. They cleaned the toilets, did the laundry, swept the floors, roads, and picked up the mountains of trash left behind by careless partiers. They were the invisible ones, the ones not even worthy of a simple thank you. It was here that Jadeite walked, looking for a specific building that would take him to that person he wanted to meet.

"There it is," he said to himself. It was a dull, tan concrete building that had been hastily built to accommodate several families. He looked around, then walked up to the metal door and knocked on it.

Quickly, the metal view slit opened up and a pair of brown eyes stared back.

"Have you eaten today, sir?" That was the prompt for the passphrase, spoken in very accented English.

"I have only eaten until my belly is full," was the response from Jadeite.

"Come on in." The door opened up, and Jadeite stepped into the house.

Inside, it was very spartan. In the West, the house would have been for only one family; here, there were at least five crammed into the place. Several bare light bulbs hung from the ceiling, flickering from time to time; the electricity was illegally siphoned from the power network.

"Comrade Jadeite," a man said coming up from the (also illegally dug) basement. "It was a surprise. I did not expect to see you so soon here."

"Comrade Ramesh," Jadeite replied. "I was in the area, and decided to bring by some supplies."

Jadeite handed the duffle bags over to Ramesh.

Ramesh used to be a Naxalite, part of the many Maoist insurgent groups that had given the Indian government so much trouble over the years. They resorted to extremely effective insurgent warfare, completely outclassing the police and even the paramilitary groups sent after them. But as of late, they had been on the decline and most of them had gone into hiding, waiting to strike again. Ramesh however, was an ex-Naxalite simply for the reason that he was too extreme, even for the Naxalites who kicked him out after he killed two members of their group who he deemed to be police informants (they weren't). Jadeite had the fortune of running into Comrade Ramesh as he was wandering the streets of Bangalore, passing out the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao's teachings. He was more than willing to follow Jadeite's plan, along with so many others. And, he spoke good English as well.

He checked inside the bag and whistled.

"This…this is very nice. It will help our cause very much." Inside, there were several disassembled AKMs and Makarov pistols, along with magazines, ammo, spare parts, grease, and some C4. Fittingly, the AKMs were Chinese produced.

"I certainly hope so, because I have a date for you."

Comrade Ramesh looked up at Jadeite from the bags.  
"Are you certain? If we do this…?"

"I am well aware of the risks. It will be December 17th, at 0400hrs, two months and eleven days from now. You have the maps, and the plans."

A huge smile appeared on Ramesh's face. "But why on the 17th of December? Is there something important on that date?"

Jadeite smiled back in return. "The attack is actually on the 16th, but for timing reasons, it is the 17th here. But going back to your question, the big one that I can think of for you is the end of the Bangladeshi War of Independence. But in the West, it concedes with the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. This is of course, when America is awake, and Asia is asleep. "

Comrade Ramesh was very ecstatic now. There was nothing holding them back…well, the police, the CISF, the military...but he had been evading them for years now. What was a few extra months?

"Thank you Comrade Jadeite. We will show you the weakness of the West and their puppets in the Indian military and government. Only then will the veil of consumerism and oppression will be lifted from the people's eyes, and they will begin to reap the benefits of Chairman Mao and his vision for the oppressed."

Oh what you don't know about Chairman Mao, Jadeite thought. Let's see; Autocrat who ruled with an iron fist? Check. Killed Hundreds of Millions of his own people? Check. Set back the Chinese Economy by decades? Check. Paranoid? Check, and Check. Hey, I'm not saying I don't dislike the guy, but if you want to dominate the world, do it right.

"Would you like to stay for tea?" No meeting could go without tea, especially in India.

"Ah…yes." Jadeite would have liked to have left, but it would have been rude and very detrimental to his mission if he refused. So he sat down, on the ground while he waited for one of the women in the house to make some tea.

"Comrade, I would like to go over some of the details again," Ramesh asked.

Jadeite looked around the room. Several men and women stood around, staring back.

"They're with me," Ramesh prompted.

Jadeite knew that, but still, he had to be extra careful.

"Well, I'll point it out on the map to you." Ramesh asked one of the men to bring a map of Bangalore out.

"This is where I want you to attack." Jadeite circled the areas around Shivajinagar, a district within Bangalore; "I want you to attack Safina Plaza, the Army Grounds and the Parade Grounds nearby. Once you're finished, move over to Brigade Street and make your escape from there."

"Is that all? What about the Metro system?" Ramesh had seen more and more of the light rail system go up during his time here, and it seemed like an enterprising target.

"There are other teams," Jadeite said hesitatingly. "This mission will be very large. But I must keep the other teams separate from each other, because if the police find out."

Although Ramesh was upset that Jadeite had not told him about the others, he completely understood the need for security in conducting an operation of this size. Even the small area of operations that he would be attacking took a considerable amount of time and effort to plan, gather supplies, and then finally execute, let alone a whole citywide operation.

"How many teams are there?" It was a question that Ramesh had to ask.

Jadeite sighed. "There are about twenty others, all assigned to attack different targets in the city. Some on the outskirts, some attacking tech parks, the Metro system, like you mentioned before, etc."

"Who are in these other teams?" Ramesh persisted. He was putting his life on the line here, and he had at least the right to know who was making up this large operation.

"Comrade Ramesh…"

"I'm sorry, but I must know? Are they like me and my kin?"

Jadeite just had to open his mouth and spill the beans, but there was no going back now.

"Some are like you, yes. Others…well, I had to recruit some others."

"Like…?"

"LTTE."

The Liberation Tamil Tigers Eelam was a terrorist group that had operated in Sri Lanka, fighting against the Sinhalese (Buddhist) majority that had oppressed the Tamil (Hindu) minority for years. They were among one of the first groups to use suicide bombers, and had defacto control over a huge chunk of Sri Lanka until the army got its shit together and defeated them in 2009. But some of the former members fought on, and Jadeite couldn't pass up that opportunity to recruit hardened and experienced troopers who hated the Indian government for interfering in Sri Lanka in 1987.

"Oh for…" Comrade Ramesh threw up his hands, nearly knocking the woman bringing them chai over.

"Sorry." She served them tea and then retreated into the background.

"Why are you getting those bastards into this?" Ramesh interrogated.

"Look, we need everyone I can get my hands on," Jadeite replied. "If they used to be LTTE, fine. Ex-Naxalite? Fine. Disaffected RAW agents? Yeah, them too." (RAW is the Research and Analysis Wing, the Indian intelligence service).

Ramesh sipped on some tea. As committed to his Maoist ideology as he was, he recognized the pragmatism that Jadeite exhibited.

"Alright Jadeite. I see your point. If I was in your position, I would probably do the same."

"Besides," Jadeite added. "It's the Indian government you want to bring down, not the others that want the same goal."

"The enemy of my enemy," Ramesh began.

"Is my friend," Jadeite concluded.

* * *

Jadeite left an hour later, satisfied that the mission was progressing smoothly. He left the small, concrete house, with the occupants looking at him as he walked down the street toward his car and driver, who had been faithfully waiting there.

"Take me back to my hotel," he commanded to his driver.

"Yes, boss."

The drive back again, was traffic filled and tiring. Jadeite didn't understand how sitting in a back of a car could tire him out. It was like something was sucking the energy right out of him or…something like that. Maybe one of those New Age-y religions would have an explanation for that.

His phone rang, again.

"Beryl. Great." He picked it up. "Hi Beryl."

"Jadeite? Jadeite, can you hear me?"

"Yeah, I can hear you."

"Hold on, I can't…there we go, that's much better." Overseas phone calls were difficult in India, even with the rapid infrastructure that had been built up over the last couple of years.

"What's going Beryl?"

"Well, we have a problem."

Jadeite put a hand on his forehead. This problem would more than likely entail him to stay in the country for a couple more days. "What's the problem?"

"Somebody from the CSR desk in India sent an email to a congress member we've been spying on in the United States, informing them of our operations. This congress member has also been…giving us some trouble. Poking around, asking questions and stuff. I've got Nephrite handling that situation over there right now, but you're going to have to deal with the problem."

"Why can't the SAILOR team deal with it?"

"Oh, that's a great idea," Beryl replied facetiously. "I'm going to pull off a team that's falling apart right now and put them back on a mission."

"I told you that they weren't up for the job," Jadeite retorted.

"It's just a couple glitches in the program, nothing to worry about," Beryl said. "They're stressed, it was their first month out, and they killed a lot of people. So give them a bit of time."

"Beryl, you're not becoming soft, are you? Sounds like you're having an attachment to that team." Jadeite really liked to press her buttons sometimes.

"Please. I'm just stating the obvious and what Dr. Kobayashi reports to the PM. So, stop worrying about me and find this person who sent the email. Don't kill them though, just…find out who it is and make them stop. Fly back to Japan after you have done so."

"Okay Beryl, I'm moving, thanks."

He hung up the phone and wondered why she didn't want him to kill the particular person. People died in India all the time and nobody noticed, so why not now? Oh well. He would deal with that problem tomorrow.

* * *

Sudhir was really sleepy after a long day at work. More calls, more idiot customers, more of everything. D.D had been acting strange after that Jadeite guy came by and complemented him for his work. He seemed afraid of Sudhir, and piled on the work after the inspection. The auto rickshaw ride home to his apartment in Kanaka Nagar. The traffic nearby was so busy at times, and it kept him up at night but that was the price one had to pay.

"Hey, boss, that's enough," he said to the auto rickshaw driver. He was almost at his apartment block. But the rickshaw driver kept going.

"Uh…I want to get off here," Sudhir protested.

Quickly, the driver sped into a dark alley and hopped out, leaving Sudhir there wondering what the hell was going on. He got out of the rickshaw…and was clobbered on the head.

"Ow…" But the beating didn't stop there; legs, arms, sticks all beat on his body for a good thirty seconds before they stopped. He was in a lot of pain when they did so; he couldn't even move his body.

"Hello there."

A familiar voice came from above him. Sudhir could barely look up and see the face of Jadeite, looking down at him with several hired goons.

"Mr…Sudhir…Reddy, I believe. I heard from someone that you sent an email to somebody in America."

"What…what are you talking about?" Sudhir tried to deny it, but he knew that he was caught.

"Don't be coy with me," Jadeite said. "I know that you sent that email to that Representative in America, and Ms. Mercy Abraham was all too willing to give up that information."

Sudhir choked on that last one. "You…you better not have done anything to her."

"We didn't," Jadeite replied. "I'm not that much of a monster. So anyway, I've been left a little conundrum. Part of me wants to kill you, but you've been such a great asset to this company and so, I have a piece of advice to you."

He leaned in close to him.

"Stay out of politics and drop the good guy act. This world already has enough of those, and well, you know how they end up."

Sudhir didn't want to respond to that, but he forced himself to.

"And what if I don't 'drop' the good guy act? What's to keep you from spying on ordinary people and invading privacy?"

"Oh, that's the least of my concerns right now," Jadeite replied. "I'm only dealing with this problem you've created right now. So, be a good boy, and cut that shit out."

There really wasn't much Sudhir could do about that.

"Well, I'm glad that we could reach some sort of agreement." Jadeite took out a ten rupee note and placed it by Sudhir's head. "Take another rickshaw home."

He started to leave, but then turned around and whispered one last time to him.

"I ever hear about you contacting foreign agencies about our overseas operations, I will not hesitate to kill you next time."

With that, Jadeite left, dismissing his hired goons and getting back into his chartered car.

* * *

"Beryl," he said, talking on his phone. "I got the guy. He's not going to be doing any of that superhero stuff anymore."

"Very good Jadeite. I knew I could count on you."

"Beryl," Jadeite hesitated. "Why didn't you want me to kill him?"  
"Because," Beryl replied. "There was no reason to. We took care of the problem in the US with no incident. There shouldn't be an incident here. Besides, you'll have you chance later on."

"I see." Jadeite didn't, but again, Beryl was a strategic thinker. Not killing someone today might leave open opportunities for other plans…considering if they didn't change their minds along the way, which humans had a bad habit of doing.

"Get back to Japan ASAP," she commanded. "I'm going to have a meeting here of all the company heads."

"Everyone?" Jadeite was a little surprised, but this was to be expected. The big event was coming up soon, and everyone needed to be on the same page, in the same room. Teleconferencing left too many things to chance.

"Yes, everyone. Nephrite, Zoisite, Kunzite, the whole lot. We're going to have a nice chat about upcoming events."

"Of course, Beryl."

"By the way, is everything going well with your…special plans in Bangalore? The ones we talked about?"

"Yes, everyone is in place. I've informed all of them in person or by SMS, and they are fully equipped and briefed."

"That's very good to hear. Zoisite is moving a bit slower than I would have liked, but he's always been like that. Plus, the British are a bit paranoid, and that makes setting up things there problematic."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, glad to hear that everything is working out on your end. See you here."

Beryl hung up, leaving Jadeite with a sense that things, despite the setbacks and problems, were finally falling into place.

At long last, they could begin on the road to their destiny.


	23. Chapter XXI: Vicious Paper cuts

**Chapter XXI: Vicious Paper cuts.**

**0900hrs, 7 October 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan**

_"This is not just a report, it's a deadly weapon."_

_"Sir, an M-16 is a deadly weapon. A report is just a pile of paper, unless you're planning to inflict a lot of extremely vicious paper cuts." The Pentagon Wars._

* * *

The SAILOR team was back in their safe haven, having killed their way across all of East Asia and part of Southwest Asia.

In the span of thirty days, no less than twenty members of the board of directors for various companies around China, Taiwan, South Korea and the world at large had "accidents" or "mishaps" or had been blatantly killed off. Five CEOs had "collapsed" from "heart attacks" or "overwork", twelve CFOs had "disappeared", "took extended leave" or "resigned" due to scandals and two CIOs had just been plain run over by a car. And that was just counting the ones that the media reported.

But the SAILOR team didn't know that. All they knew was that the people in question were supporting terrorism, supporting dictators, were corrupt, were using the system to their advantage, were outside the justice system and they had to be prosecuted in the most harshest way possible. In the briefings the SAILOR team received, they were told that these people were beyond reproach, beyond evil, beyond the law; the only way to fight them then was outside of the law and to stop this type of behavior from afflicting Japan. Of course, they couldn't leave any evidence of their involvement behind, but killing a bunch of white-collar criminals was no different that killing dictators or even street thugs. Maybe it was even better than that. And besides, in the post-recession world, there was no tears shed for the rich banker or investor who fell victim to vigilante justice of the ninety-nine percent.

In addition, there had been an outcry over the industrial safety of workers as no less than fifteen factories, twelve assembly plants and five mining shafts had suffered catastrophic failures, resulting in the deaths of over two hundred workers in total, just in China alone in the span of a week. There were similar accidents in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. Many workers had gone on strike, protesting the horrid working conditions that they were working in, and shutting down the remaining plants and mines where safety had taken a backseat to profit.

Fifteen terrorist (or potential) cells had been killed off as well, their work credited to the special operations teams of the country they had been found murdered in, but intelligence analysts were baffled to who was conducting these operations. Nobody suspected Japan; they were too pacifistic in their rhetoric and foreign policy. Whoever was doing it, needed a pat on the back for their work.

Coincidentally, the previous fiscal quarter in Japan for Nakanishi Group had been the best ever on record. They had acquired a myriad of companies, ranging from oil shipping, drilling and processing, food distributors, real estate, and a host of other different services. Investors, skittish about the recent decimation of heads of companies, the weakening confidence of other corporations and their inability to withstand strikes and a sudden leadership change, poured their money into Nakanishi. It was a safe, dependable, and profitable enterprise in a time when things seemed uncertain, unclear, clouded, muddled and full of unknowns. Japan was starting to do quite well again.

* * *

"Dammit," Amy said, looking at an after action report.

"What is it?" Mina asked. There were in that big conference room, again. This was their week off, supposedly, but it had started with lots and lots of paperwork. Well, Mina and Amy were doing paperwork and everyone else was still sleeping, jetlagged from the exhausting cross country romp that was their first campaign of terror.

"I'm still mad about our first mission." Amy signed off on a report, signifying that it was accurate to the best of her knowledge. Of course, someone with the right clearance could go into one of the massive databases (1000 Terabytes, or one Petabyte, to be exact) that the SAILOR team kept (offsite in a secure location) and view all of the video that their eyepieces captured and see if they matched up with the reports. Not that anyone would.

"Give it a rest," Mina said. "You and Serena made up and it went well. She's got Raye to fight with now."

"What's up with them?" Amy moved on to the next pile of paper. Both Mina's and Amy's stacks of paper measured about twenty centimeters high, and that was after an hour's worth of work.

"She's been a little hotheaded as of late. You remember that guy we were supposed to meet on the Taipei subway system?"

"Yeah? What was his name…? Steven…?"

"No, the other one. Deng." Mina took a sip of tea.

"Oh, yeah. What about him?"

"Well, Raye almost took him out. He being very evasive toward our questions and…"

"…Raye nearly threw him on the train tracks." Amy covered her face in embarrassment upon remembering that event. "Did we ever get that information out of him?"

"Yeah, but it turned out, he was working for us at the Defense Intelligence Headquarters."

"So we had the info, but since we can't talk to other agencies…" Amy looked down at the paper she was supposed to be reading. More reports.

"…we wasted a whole two days trying to find a target that didn't exist, in a building that was locked down by the military, for a mission that was rendered moot." Mina twirled her blond hair around. "That's some messed up shit," she continued.

"Uh-huh." Amy signed off on yet another report and placed it in the "finished" pile.

"Wow, you work fast," Mina commented. Her finished pile was significantly smaller than Amy's.

"Yep." Amy didn't feel like talking anymore, so Mina and her continued on in silence.

Another hour passed. Raye, Serena and Lita were still not up to help them.

"Goddamnit, they were supposed to help us," Amy whined. She had almost finished her pile of work.

"Well, they do most of the fighting," Mina pointed out. "We're more support."

"But we can handle our own in a fight," Amy pointed out. "They should at least do some of the paper work."

"What was that Amy?" Serena walked into the room, still in her pajamas. Thankfully, she was still half-asleep so she did not hear Amy's snide remark.

"Nothing Serena, glad you could join us." Serena plopped down into one of the chairs and stared at the pile of paperwork that Amy set in front of her.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked.

"Just look at it," Amy replied, trying not to get frustrated. "If you see anything you don't like, then make some notes. Sign off on it at the bottom when you're finished."

"Ughhh." Serena continued to stare at the paperwork for a minute or so, then picked up a pen and started writing stuff. "Amy, am I doing this right?" She held up a report that she had marked.

Amy took a look at it.

"Yeah, you're doing that right."

"Hmm."

Serena did some more work, but she couldn't help but notice that Amy was still in a bad mood. Ever since Korea, she had been like this.

"Amy."

"What?" Amy replied back, rudely. Mina gave a look at her, then at Serena. Shaking her head, she left the room, leaving just Amy and Serena in there.

"Look, Amy, I'm sorry that I argued with you, okay?" Serena was sorry. Some things just tore people apart and ate at them for a long time.

"I…" Amy couldn't think of anything to say. A couple of tears rolled down her face as she struggled to find the right things to say.

"It…it's not you," she managed to say. "This has just been a long month, and I don't know if I can go through this for much longer."

Serena walked over to her and placed her hand on Amy's.

"Remember when you gave us our callsigns?" SAILOR Moon asked.

"Ah…yeah. Why?" Mercury sniffed a little, blinking back all those tears.

"You said I was the caring, feeling one, right?"

"Yeah…yeah I did."

"So, I'm here for you," Serena said. "I'm sorry that our first couple of missions didn't go well. We really didn't plan things out, and we almost didn't make it. But since we're back now, we've learned and I want you to start planning things out more carefully for us. And if that idiot Iwasaki starts messing with them…well, he'll have to deal with me."

SAILOR Mercury looked at SAILOR Moon. "Do you really mean that?"

"Yes, I do. Please believe me when I say this, but I trust you. I trust Raye, even though we fight a lot and she's a hot headed bitch most of the time. I trust Lita because she's a strong, independent woman who stands up for those that can't. I trust Mina because she's…well, she's kind of like me, but with that aside, I trust every single one of the SAILOR team. Luna, Artemis, Dr. Kawasaki…uh, that Dr. Person…yeah, can't remember his name, but he's a nice guy. And Nurse Kuroi. She's cool too."

"Thanks…" Amy sniffled. "I…"

"Don't say anything." Serena hugged her and Amy hung on for dear life.

"Hey guys, what's up!" Raye burst into the conference room, oblivious to the conversation that Amy and Serena were having. All she saw was them hugging each other.

"Uh…am I…" she said belatedly.

"Yes Raye, you are interrupting something," Serena replied, annoyed.

"Sorry. I'll come back later."

* * *

Raye closed the door and walked back out.

"What's up with Amy?" she asked Mina.

Mina shrugged. "Amy feels things differently than you or the rest of us do."

"Heh, that's for sure. But you're one to talk."

Mina shot her a look. "And what's that supposed to mean, Raye?"

"I'm not the one who apologizes after killing people. We're supposed to kill people, Mina, and I'm not going to apologize for that."

Mina sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "Raye, give it a rest. I didn't want to do this job, but Amy helped me get through the transitional period."

"I just don't see what the big deal is. Amy can't handle herself, and that's why you and her are on support."

"Okay, Raye, are you really trying to fuck with me, or are you just that stupid?" Mina was seconds away from losing her temper with her.

Raye poked at the floor with her foot. "I guess…" She had completely lost that arrogance that had been prevalent just seconds ago. "Look, it's about my grandpa."

"What about him? We're all missing our families here." Mina wasn't buying into it.

"I…I still keep on the news from the shrine. Mina, he died last week." Raye started crying.

Mina was now left feeling like a complete ass. No wonder Raye had been completely batshit insane in the last week of the mission. She was trying to cover up the sadness that was inside of her.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Mina asked. "We could have helped."

"No, you couldn't!" Raye yelled. "Like you said, we can't go back! I never wanted this, just like you. I wanted to be the head priestess of Hikawa Shrine and take over from Grandpa, but after the explosion…"

"Raye…" Mina reached in to hug her, but Raye pushed her away.

"Fuck you!" Raye tried to run down the hall, but tripped and fell. She lay there sobbing hysterically on the floor.

"Fuck…fuck…" she cursed underneath her breath and she lay there, looking at the stupid tiles on the floor. Mina walked over to her and put her arm on her back.

"I'm sorry Raye." She comforted her as best as she could.

Raye looked back at her. Her eyes glistened with tears, the hardened killer part of her wiped away by the torrent of emotions that she was experiencing right now.

"Dad never wanted me at that temple," Raye said. She sat back up and cuddled up to Mina. "He wanted me to be like, a Christian like himself. That's why he sent me to Catholic school. But I don't really care about that part, I didn't really hate going there, it was just the intent behind it."

Mina held onto her, wiping Raye's tears away. "Dammit," Raye muttered. "I've been such an ass these last couple of months, so angry at everything."

There was a couple moments of silence. Mina could hear Amy sobbing in the background.

"I have an idea," she said to Raye.

"And what would that be genius?" Raye mumbled back.

"Let's hold a funeral for him. It can be with all of us, or just you alone. But I think it would help."

Raye looked at her.

"Come on, let's go get something from the cafeteria. Make you feel better."

"I think Serena would feel better if she went to the cafeteria," Raye snickered, through the tears.

Both of them laughed at that. "I wonder if they're serving doughnuts," Raye wondered out loud. "I kind of like them."

"But not nearly as much as Serena."

"They have doughnuts today?!"

Mina and Raye turned around to see Serena and Amy standing there.

"Well…uh…"

"Amy, we're going to the cafeteria. Let's go!" With that, they dashed off to the cafeteria, leaving Raye and Mina there on the floor.

"Alright, let's go join them," Mina said, helping Raye up. "By the way, where's Lita?"

* * *

Lita was cleaning her room. Again. This was probably the third time that she had ripped up her entire room and put it back together. She couldn't stop cleaning; she had to keep going, had to keep her mind off of things.

Knock knock knock.

"Lita! It's us!"

"Who the fuck is 'us'?!" Lita yelled. This was not a good time.

"Mina and Raye," was the response.

"I'm really fucking busy right now, come back some other time," Lita hissed back.

She continued to clean her room, making her bed, ensuring that the sheets were tight, so tight that you could bounce a quarter off of them.

"Lita," Mina said through the door. "Come on, let us in."

"Yeah, we just wanna talk," Raye echoed.

"Just leave me the fuck alone!"

Mina sighed and looked at Raye. "How long has she been doing this?"

"Last night. I don't think she slept at all."  
Mina pounded on the door again. "Lita, please, we just want you to come to cafeteria and have some lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

"That's bullshit, you haven't eaten since Saturday," Mina replied. "I know, because you didn't take dinner with us then."

There was silence. Finally, the door opened and Lita stepped out.

"Fine. I'm coming."

Mina peered inside the room. It was completely clean, again.

Lita was about to close the door, then she remembered to take her pills that Dr. Kobayashi had given her.

"Hold up, I gotta do something." She rushed back into the room and popped open two pill bottles, taking one pill from each.

"What's that you're doing?" Raye asked. She had followed her into the room, along with Mina.

"Mind your own goddamn business," Lita replied.

"No, why are you taking pills?" Mina asked.

"Drop it," Lita snapped. She opened her mouth and swallowed the pills.

"For crying out loud," Mina said. She tried to reach over Lita and into the desk, but Lita whipped her left arm back to stop her. Unfortunately, she forgot how strong she was, and sent Mina flying in Raye and onto the bed.

"OW!" she cried.

Lita put her hand over her mouth. "I'm…I'm sorry guys…I…"

"Watch what you're doing!" Raye snarled back. "You don't know how strong you are!"

"It's okay, Raye, back off." Mina got back up, not too badly hurt (although she had a bloody lip). "Lita, we want to know what's wrong. Just tell us."

Lita looked back at them, unable to find the right words to say for a moment.

"Alright…but it's kind of silly."

"Try me," Raye said.

"Alright, when Kobayashi was doing some medical checkups on me…he found something."

Mina and Raye silently gasped.

"What…what was it?" Mina asked cautiously.

"It wasn't so much 'it' as a condition," Lita said. "It's really embarrassing…really. It's…hypertension."

"Ah...what?" Raye had never heard of hypertension, and neither had Mina.

"What's that…?" Mina said. "It sounds kind of dangerous."

"Well, it's not like it's going to kill me now," Lita said, "But it just means that my blood pressure is higher than usual. And it's pretty unusual for people our age to have hypertension."

"Oh. That's it?" Raye said. "That's nothing to be embarrassed over."

"I know but taking pills for something like that…"

"Jesus Lita, you gave me a scare there," Mina said, smiling. "I thought you might be on hormone therapy or something like that."

"Oh, ha, ha," Lita sarcastically said. "Those rumors about me being a transsexual were completely unfounded."

"But you have to wonder…" Raye started.

"Don't make me hit you again," Lita threatened, jokingly. "Plus, I'm not the one who looks at porn all the time."

"Hey, I told you to never mention that ever again!" Raye protested. Mina giggled at that.

Lita's stomach gave a loud grumble. "Oh fine. Let's go get something to eat."

"I think Serena's eaten all the doughnuts today," Mina said.

"They have doughnuts?!" Lita was gone so fast that Mina and Raye had to run full sprint to just to keep up.

* * *

Serena had eaten all of the doughnuts.

"I hate you so much," Lita said, looking at the empty tray. "You're a complete fatass."

"Oh hush," Serena said. "Kuroi is bringing out some more for us."

Nurse Kuroi sometimes doubled on the cafeteria staff, due to the high-security clearance needed to serve food here. Even at top secret facilities, getting work in a cafeteria was difficult.

"Here's some more girls," she said. "We used your recipe from way back to make these."

"Thanks Nurse Kuroi," Lita said, picking a maple flavored one from the stack.

Kuroi turned around to leave, but Amy stopped her.

"Hey, we've been hearing about…well."

"Me and Kawasaki?" Kuroi blushed. "It's been going on for a while now."

The girls giggled. "How long?" asked Mina.

"Perhaps two months, maybe three." Kuroi looked at the girls. They had aged a little bit; the stress was taking its toll a bit, but they were still young, ready for what the world had to throw at them.

"How are the missions treating you?" Kuroi didn't really want to ask that question, but it was part of her job to make sure that everyone was still in good health, physical or mental.

They quickly became quiet, staring at her like if she was from a different world.

"They're…fine," Serena replied tersely. "We're fine, you know. I understand you have to do your job and such, but please."

"Sorry," Kuroi replied. "It's my job to keep tabs on those types of things."

"It's alright." Mina said, slowly eating a glazed doughnut. "You followed our recipe pretty well."

"Thank you." Kuroi stood there for a second, then left. She was walking down the hall toward the kitchen when a voice called out to her.

"Hey, wait up." It was Amy.

"What's going on?" she asked her.

"I just wanted to know…anything. More information about this place…just…"

"Just what?"

"I always have this gut feeling that somebody is holding out information on us," she said to Kuroi.

"I…I'm shocked that you would think that," Kuroi said in a hurt fashion. This had all been planned though, and she read the pre-scripted lines carefully, as she had done when Amy had first woken up in the medical facility.

"I didn't mean it like that," Amy replied, backing off. "I didn't mean you. It's just that…"

"Oh, so you mean, Dr. Kawasaki? Dr. Kobayashi? Luna? Artemis? Is that who you mean?" Kuroi snapped at Amy.

"No, no, that's…that's…" Amy was sorry that she had ever brought up this conversation topic. "Forget I ever brought up this up to you. I'm sorry."

She stalked away, irritated, but sad that she couldn't get anything out of anyone here. It was getting so frustrating to accept the excuse that she was doing all of this "for her country". It didn't explain why she tried to dial her mother on a phone, or VOIP, even using TOR, came back with a busy tone. Just one time…one time to tell her that everything was going well. The emails and SMSs she sent, even from overseas never went through…the information was always terminated before reaching her mother's email address or her phone. There was nothing she could do about it. Yeah, she might put her mom in danger, but for once…for once…

She couldn't understand it. Every program she ran to figure out why data wasn't being transmitted, every line of code she programmed, every command she entered into the command line seemed to lead her in circles, with endless log files and error reports, dropped or obliterated packets, phone calls to nowhere…the government couldn't have security everywhere, so why was every attempt to circumvent these restrictions met with failure?

Did the microchips implanted in her brain have something to do with it…? But they said…

_Listen to yourself,_ she thought. _They said this, they said that. You believe them? You said yourself to keep watch on what they're doing. And now you have part of a computer in your brain that may or may not be interfering with your thought processes. The curse of technology…_

Amy shook her head, trying to get all the cobwebs out, but it was no good. She was stuck at an impasse, and there was no good way to resolve it unless she moved forward. That was the only way to solve anything anyway. She walked back to the cafeteria, to her friends, oblivious to her dilemma.

* * *

"It's getting worse," Kuroi said to Kobayashi in the conference room. There were still papers there that the girls had signed off on, scattered and full of red pen marks.

"I know."

"You know?" Kuroi leaned forward and looked Kobayashi in the eye. "You know? All the girls had a mental breakdown today."

"That was to be expected!" Kobayashi replied. "We took into account mental fatigue and stress that this would incur upon the members of this program."

"But like this?" Kuroi leaned back and folded her arms. "Amy is getting smarter by the day. The programmers can barely create algorithms that can keep up with her thinking. She's tried no less than twenty times in the last two weeks to contact her mother."

"And the others?"

"Raye just lost her Grandpa, and we know she was very close to him. On the CCTV video, Mina and her were talking about holding a funeral later on this week. She's in a mentally unstable state and starting to exhibit antisocial behavior. You saw how Serena reacted to Raye and Amy; she's tense, and although she cares and can give condolence to others, she's suffering inside. Lita is starting to isolate herself; she cleaned her room three times last night and didn't sleep at all."

"Any prognosis for them?" Kobayashi rubbed his eyes. This was really going south.

"Amy is barely keeping it together, and when I mean barely, just by a hair. Mina is the only one that seems to be in a mentally healthy state. She is kind of like Serena, but her mental health and hygiene is significantly better. The others…well, you know what I just said."

Kawasaki entered the room, opening the doors to the conference room extremely loudly.

"Good news everyone!" he announced.

"What is it?" Kobayashi and Kuroi stood up and approached him.

"I have this." Kawasaki handed Kobayashi a tablet computer that he had been working on.

"Uh-huh…hmmm…uh-huh. Very interesting," he said, scrolling through the data that the microchips had collected in the past several months. "Oh…wow." The information that was on the tablet actually wasn't interesting at all. Kobayashi had to feign some sort of interest at the data that he already knew meant nothing.

"Oh wow is correct," Kawasaki said, beaming.

"Let me see that." Nurse Kuroi took the computer away and looked at the data. "This is very interesting indeed," she said dryly. Sensing this, Kawasaki tried to explain himself in greater detail.

"The behavior of the SAILOR team has become more cooperative during these last couple of months," Kawasaki began. "Their success rate is basically a one to one ratio in terms of completed operations. But that's not the part that interests me, it's the microchips that we implanted that made them stronger and faster."

"And they did just that," Kobayashi said. "I designed the damn things."

"Exactly, they're working. They're helping to control the SAILOR team in the direction that we want them to, completely passively with the subroutines that were preprogrammed into the microchips beforehand."

"Kawasaki," Kobayashi replied. "This is all well and good, but how does this help us?!" He shoved the tablet computer back to him.

"What do you mean?" Kawasaki said, confused. "The microchips are doing their job, perfectly."

"I beg to disagree with you there," Kobayashi responded. "Have you seen the girls recently?"

"Well, I did a physical on them when they came back, and I've seen them in the halls and such."

"And did you notice their mental health when they came back?"

"Well, I'm not really trained to be a psychologist," Kawasaki protested.

"I know you're not, but I don't think you've noticed that the morale around here has plummeted in the last month or so. These microchips of ours are working, but it's causing a very bad reaction from the girls." Kobayashi stood up again, and started pacing around the room.

"So what do you want me to do about it?" Kawasaki said. "I think we shouldn't do anything. Let them talk to each other, rely on the team for help, and let the passive subroutines do their work. Less work on our part."

Kuroi shot him a look. 'How can you be so cruel? These girls have done so much for us, seen so many things that we will never see in our lifetimes, and all you can come up with is to 'leave them alone' and 'let them deal with their own problems'.

"That's the whole point," Kawasaki said. "The more we interfere, the more problems we will cause."

Kuroi continued to stare at him.

"Enough you two," Kobayashi interrupted. "I agree with Kawasaki, albeit reluctantly." He gave Kawasaki a look of disapproval though. "Further intervention via surgery or any other means to affect the thought patterns of the SAILOR project is too risky, and things the way they are now…"

"I don't believe this," Kuroi said. "You two are unbelievable."

She stalked out. "Yuki!" Kawasaki started after her, but Kobayashi stopped him.

"Leave it be for now," he said.

"Dammit," Kawasaki muttered.


	24. Chapter XXII: Remember, Remember…

**Chapter XXII: Remember, Remember…**

**0340hrs, 5 November 2013, Khabarovsk Krai, Russian Federation.**

_"Remember, remember/the fifth of November/the gunpowder treason and plot. I know of no reason /why the gunpowder treason/should ever be forgot."_

* * *

Amy was feeling even more shitty than usual. She didn't know why, but it was someone had dropped a veil from over her eyes, and she could concentrate even less now. She didn't really care about contacting her mom anymore; she had given up a couple of weeks ago when internet access had been completely shut off for a couple of days and Kobayashi had come in and had a little talk with her. Now, she had more important things to do, whether she liked it or not.

"Where's the target Amy?" Serena asked over the radio. She, like everyone else on the SAILOR team, was feeling more of the same after their "rest" in Japan. Another month on the road had not helped them to recover as well; they were ready to take on whatever task was assigned to them physically, but mentally, there were many obstacles that could stand in their way of that. And it had been the same, more killings, more shootings, more stuff blowing up, and it was just starting to wear more and more on the SAILOR team.

No response.

"Dammit, where is the target Amy?" Serena hissed. Her temper was become more and more short.

"It's five kilometers from here," Amy replied. "They're still travelling down the Amur river by boat."

"How long do they have until they reach Khabarovsk?" she asked.

"Maybe two hours, at best."

The SAILOR team was waiting in an area by mouth of the Amur River, the tenth longest river in the world. They had been assigned to intercept some stolen military hardware from the Russian Military, and reportedly, it was on its way to Japan via ship to be distributed all over the world. Budget cuts in the Russian armed forces meant that selling weapons to whomever had the cash on hand was a practice not condoned by higher-ups. If they knew of the practice in the first place, that is.

"Alright, that gives us some time before they can get there. Luna, do you have the RFID signal?"

"Affirmative." Luna was still in that P3 Orion, flying over the sea. The aircraft did give off an IFF tone, identifying itself as a JASDF aircraft and for the most part, everyone who had an air force in the area (South Korea, North Korea, China and Russia) left it alone…for the most part. They had a couple of close calls with Chinese Shenyang J-11s had buzzed by, wondering what they were doing. The usual response was that they were on a training exercise and that there was nothing to worry about. They didn't buy it of course, but seeing no evidence of foul play, they had flown off to a safe distance and mirrored their movements for some time before RTBing.

"Did the Chinese give you guys a hard time again?" Lita asked. She was sitting on the shore, separate from the rest of the team and keeping an overwatch position with a Dragunov SVU, a bullpup version of the famous Dragunov marksman rifle.

"They buzzed by an hour ago," Luna replied. "And please everyone, use proper radio protocol like we talked about in the briefing, over."

"What was that?" Serena asked, distracted by what she thought were some people on the shore. It was just some ducks though.

"Never mind, over." It was a losing battle, trying to get them to use the correct protocol words on the radio net. At least the transmissions were encrypted.

"Right. ETA on the transports?" Serena was getting fidgety over this mission. They had been in this stupid fishing boat for hours now, and with nothing to do, she had started thinking about food…

"About twenty minutes."

"Standby," Lita said. She saw some lights in the distance, coming down from the north on a boat. "I have contact with possible target."

"This better be it," Raye said. She was on an unnamed island in the middle of the river.

"It is," Amy replied with trepidation. "At least, the RFID chips at least say it is."

"Everyone standby." Luna brought up the real-time satellite feed and tracked the ship as it approached the AO. "Artemis, did you get Mercury and Venus into position?"

She looked over at him. Artemis was casually swinging his chair from side to side, eating some cheese puffs and getting them all over his white uniform.

"Artemis!"

"What?" he moaned, dropping some of the cheese puffs on the floor. The pilot was not happy about that and had admonished him in the past for being so careless. Not that he cared.

"Did you send Mercury and Venus over to their positions?" Luna asked impatiently.

"Yeah, I sent them to an overwatch position on the other side of the river. They'll start over to the boat once it's been cleared out by SAILOR Moon and Mars."

"And Jupiter?"

"Uh…yeah. What was she doing again?"

Luna sighed and looked at the mission plan again. "She's supposed to be in the water right now."

"Alright, I'll send her in." He hit the push to talk button on his headset. "Hey, Jupiter."

"What is it?" she replied. She was still looking at the boat in the distance. It was more barge on the outside than actual boat, but no matter.

"You're supposed to be paddling toward that boat right now," Artemis said in a casual fashion.

"Oh you have to be shitting me." She remembered that part from the briefing now. "Alright, I'm moving."

"Roger."

Lita got into the small, wooden fishing boat and started rowing toward the lights upstream. It would have been an impossible task for a normal person, but her prosthetics gave her just the right edge so she could basically swerve the boat into position when it passed by.

"Alright," Luna said. "SAILOR Moon, start your approach."  
"Fine, I'm moving." Serena got out of the (larger) fishing boat, which was in the middle of the transportation lane that the boat/barge had to pass through. They would hit it, and in the confusion, SAILOR Moon, Mars and Jupiter would sneak on board and subdue the crew. Mercury and Venus would then come aboard to help find the stolen materiel.

"I hate this." Serena was in a wetsuit, but it still was going to be cold. She jumped into the freezing river, and slowly made her way toward the boat.

"Raye…you in the water?" she quietly said over the radio. The boat was very close now; she could see several crew members walking on the deck, talking or having a smoke.

"Yeah, I'm in. It's fucking cold right now."

"Tell me about it."

"Target is approaching," Amy said quietly.

"Thanks Captain Obvious," Raye said.

"All units, standby for execution," Luna interrupted. "Five…four…three…two…one…"

The crew members suddenly saw the boat coming out of the darkness, and they slowed down and moved to starboard to try and avoid it. But it was too late, and they crashed right into it, causing the boat to come to a halt. There was a lot of yelling and cursing in Russian, and some of the crew members were getting poles and crowbars to try to pry the ship out of the way.

"All SAILOR units, execute."

"Roger. I'm moving." Serena paddled her way silently toward the boat, aiming for a ladder on the side of it. Several crew members ran past her as she made her way toward the ladder, but they did not see her in the darkness.

She climbed up on the ladder and quickly boarded, swinging a silenced MP5SD3 to bear.

"I'm on board," she reported.

"Same. I'm on port," Raye said.

"I'm at the aft," Lita said. She had to go a little out of her way so that she would not be seen, but it wasn't too much of an inconvenience.

"Amy, where's the crew now?" Serena turned on her eyepiece HUD and looked around for any threats.

"Highlighting…" She did a scan and ten targets showed up at the fore of the boat. "They're busy up there." They were still trying to get the debris and the damaged boat out of the way.

"I see three more in the bridge," Mina said, looking through another Dragunov SVU . "Amy, did you get those?"

"Yeah, I'm sending them."

"I see them," Lita said. She was behind the bridge now, readying her MP5SD. The captain of the ship was yelling at the helmsman and navigator; the helmsman didn't look much older than herself.

"The captain is pissed," she said.

"I would be too if I were him," Mina replied. "Okay, let's take all of these guys out."

"Luna," Amy asked. "Any more activity on the river to the north or south of our position?"

"Negative," Luna replied. "You are a go for second phase of mission."

"Standing by," Serena whispered. She was kneeling near where she had climbed up on the ladder. There were several rows of metal container boxes on the ship, but the RFID transmitters would help in locating the cargo.

Suddenly, one of the crew members started walking from the fore of the ship and on the starboard side, right toward SAILOR Moon.

"Serena," Amy hissed. "Company."

"What..?" she replied, but it was too late. The crewman rounded one of the rows of containers and saw…

No one was there. He thought he saw something move in the shadows, but at the length they had been out here, everything moved in the shadows.

He walked past one…two…three rows of cargo before a rifle butt bashed in his face. SAILOR Moon dragged him into the shadows and snapped his neck.

"That was way close," she said into the radio. "Give me a little more warning next time, hmm?"

"Sorry," Amy replied.

"Standby again for execution of second phase," Luna said. "Artemis!"

"Yeah, what?" He was not paying attention at all.

"Stop eating those cheesy puff thingies and watch the screen!"

"Fine, fine." He sat up and looked blankly at the satellite feed.

"Okay, ready for execution."

Serena and Raye crept to the fore of the ship, and trained their weapons on the unsuspecting crew members.

Lita readied herself by the door, ready to take out everyone in the bridge.

"All units, go."

Serena and Raye flipped the select fire settings to "Auto" and depressed their triggers. The crewmembers were mowed down in a hail of 9mm bullets, never even having the chance to cry out.

SAILOR Jupiter swung from around the corner and quickly aimed five shots at the helmsman, the navigator and the captain.

The navigator and helmsman went down, their brains splattered all over the windows. But the captain got out of the way and ducked behind the steering wheel.

"Shit," Lita muttered. She fired a burst more, trying to get a ricochet onto the now hiding captain.

He popped up and fired a shot from a pistol he had in his pocket. Lita fired another burst center of mass and he went down, hard.

"What was that?" Mina asked. "I heard that from over here."

"The captain got a shot off at me," Lita reported. "He's down."

"Luna, did anyone hear that?" Amy asked.

"I'm not seeing anything light up on their communications network…" Luna said, scanning military and police frequencies. "Wait…wait…somebody just put in a call to the 112 network. They're reporting that there's a suspicious group on the Amur River, just near Vinogradovka. The police are responding and they put the local MVD unit on standby."

"How far away are they?" Serena asked. She was tracking the RFID finder and had found the containers that had military hardware in them. "I've located the boxes and are preparing to open the containers."

"I don't know," Luna said. "Artemis, what's the nearest unit closest to the SAILOR team?"

"Uh…uh…" He checked the satellite feed, looking for police units and the MVD teams. "They're several kilometers away, so maybe ten, fifteen minutes at the most."

"Alright, see what they were carrying in there and destroy the boat," Luna said, relaying orders that had just come in from Col. Iwasaki.

"Gotcha," Serena said. "Mina, Amy, stay on land, we'll send you the video feed while we open these containers."

"I hear you," Amy said. "But we can still make it over if you want…"

"That'll take too much time," Serena replied. "Watch for any sign of police or the MVD."

"Copy."

There was a padlock on the container, but it was no match for Lita's left arm, who proceeded to pull it off.

"That was too easy," she said, opening the metal door.

Raye turned on her flashlight and looked inside.

"Uh…there's nothing here." She pointed the flashlight around the container.

"Next box over," Serena said. "Sometimes the RFID finders aren't accurate. Or sometimes the crew moves them around and such."

Lita snapped the locks on the surrounding boxes, just to be sure. While Raye and Serena were checking the other containers, she stepped into one that didn't have an RFID receiver, just to make sure that they were checking everything out right.

"Guys…guys, take a look at this," she said. Raye and Serena walked over to her. There were three of the boxes on the floor, marked with Cyrillic writing. They didn't look like they carried small arms, but something much larger.

"What are those?" Raye asked.

Amy was watching from her HUD and did a quick scan of the objects.

"Oh shit," she said.

"What? What is it?" Serena looked at the boxes more carefully, and saw the standard nuclear logo on there, the black trefoil on a yellow background.

"Those are nuclear artillery shells for the Msta self-propelled gun," Amy reported. "I'm checking the radiation levels coming from those boxes."

Another scan. "There doesn't appear to be any radiation leaking out. It should be safe to open the boxes."

"Lita," Serena ordered, but she was ahead of her. Lita opened one of the containers.

"It's in here," she said. Everyone breathed out. If the nuclear weapons weren't there, that would be a bad thing. They checked the other two boxes. Same story.

"Alright, all the nuclear weapons are accounted for," Serena said. "Luna, what do you want us to do with them?"

"Same as before, scuttle the ship," she replied. "The police will recover them. Hopefully."

"Got it, set the explosives." Serena and company went to place the explosives around the ship (and hopefully, only sink it without setting off the nuclear cargo), and jumped off.

"It's cold!" Lita said. "I thought we were supposed to take the boat I rowed here off."

"No time," Serena said.

The ship suddenly exploded behind them, and started to take on water.

"Nice timing guys," Artemis said. "Police are still five minutes away. Plenty of time to get out of there and to the Consulate in Khabarovsk."

"How are those cheese puffs treating you?" Mina asked him jokingly.

"Ah…um…they're…"

"Stay on the mission please," Luna interrupted.

Serena, Lita and Raye finally managed to swim to the shoreline where Mina and Amy were positioned.

"Good job guys," Amy said, giving them some blankets to dry off.

"I didn't expect to find that on there," Serena said. "We'd better move before the police show up." They could see blue and red lights off in the distance, approaching quickly.

"Okay, in the jeeps we go," Mina said. She, Amy and Serena piled into one and Lita and Raye into another, and drove away with headlights switched off just as the police pulled up and started investigating the scene.

* * *

"How the hell did the Russians manage to lose nuclear weapons like that?" Mina asked. They were in a room in the Japanese consulate in Khabarovsk, awaiting for their transport to be refueled and looked at for bugs or transmitters.

"Mina, they're still recovering from the dissolution of the USSR," Amy said. "They're not the most safety conscious nation in the world. And when you have poorly trained and paid conscripts looking after weapons that are extremely valuable on the market, it's hard not to see how weapons get sold."

"I'm just glad that they found them," Lita said, twirling her hair. "No telling what could have happened if they found their way out of the country and into a major population center."

"But I thought they said they destroyed all their nuclear shells and rockets," Mina said, playing with her tablet computer that was on loan from Amy.

"Oh come on," Raye chortled. "Don't believe a word that they say."

"Anyway," Serena butted in. She hit the transmit button on her HUD eyepiece. "Are we headed to any more missions or do we get our break yet?" she asked Luna.

"That's affirmative," Luna replied. "You, Mars and Jupiter are going across the border to China. I'm sending the details over to you guys right now."

It looked like from the briefing, Serena, Raye and Lita were going to an industrial park in the north of China; it was actually driving distance from their current location.

"So, what's happening to Mina and I?" asked Amy.

"We've got a mission for you in India."

"India?" Mina scrunched her nose at that. "I saw Slumdog Millionaire and that was enough experience for me."

"You're going anyway," Luna reiterated. "Don't make me put Col. Iwasaki back on."

"Fine." Mina rolled her eyes at the thought of Iwasaki giving her more orders. He usually never came on the radio, but when he did…

"SAILOR Team."

"Shit." Mina heard Iwasaki's voice on the radio.

"Sorry about that guys," Luna said before she was switched off.

"Hello everyone," Iwasaki said.

"Sir," Serena replied dryly. "What do you want." The sentence was phrased more as a statement, rather than a question in defiance of superiors.

"Don't get snippy with me, SAILOR Moon," he said. "I just wanted to congratulate you on your successful mission."

"Why, thank you sir," Amy replied, in equally bored tone as SAILOR Moon. "Your wisdom fills our minds and souls with perpetual gratitude."

"For fuck's sake, what's gotten into you're team?" Iwasaki snarled at SAILOR Moon. "You're supposed to be the leader of this team, and you're letting morale slide and behavior like this tolerated?"

"We just killed thirteen men this morning," Jupiter said. "Most of them probably were just trying to make a living, sir." The mood was extremely icy now.

"If you were in the military proper, I would have had you courts-martialed for disrespect of a superior officer!"

No one was paying attention to Iwasaki now, but they couldn't turn off his transmissions (a feature put in by Iwasaki, as a matter of fact), and so the SAILOR team had to listen to another five minutes of him ranting on.

"…and if I wasn't here, stuck at this military base, I would be out there, beating you with a whip to install some discipline with you all!"

"Did you need something, sir?" Serena asked sarcastically after he had finished his tirade. "Or did you just need someone to talk to so you could get rid of those childhood demons?"

"When you get back here after your tour is over," Iwasaki said with rage in his voice, "We are going to have a nice long chat. With. Each. And. Every. One. Of. You."

"Looking forward to it, okay, thanks, bye."

Amy cut his transmission off, after spending the last five minutes trying to turn off the damn transmitter. "Put Luna on."

"Luna here."

"What's up with Col. Iwasaki?"

"SAILOR Moon, I don't ask such questions, and neither should you," was the reply.

"Why is everyone in such a bad mood all of a sudden?" Mina wondered.

"Well gee, I don't know," Raye snapped at Mina. "Maybe it's because we're getting treated like shit out here. Maybe it's because we didn't get the medical treatment that we needed. I wanted because I can't fucking sleep but no, Dr. Kobayashi refused to give me meds. But Lita get pills for her blood pressure."

"Oh come on, that's different," Lita replied.

"Yeah, sure it is."

"Hey, knock it off you guys," Serena interjected. "Transports are here. Thanks Luna for the information."

Two jeeps pulled up outside the consulate.

"Great. More fun it is," Raye muttered. She picked up her duffle bag filled with clothes, guns, and ammo and hefted it over to a Jeep.

"Uh, I was told to leave the vehicles here," the driver said. He was an employee of the consulate, and had no idea what these women were here for. He just did what they told him to do.

"Yeah, that's fine," Raye replied, shooing him away. The other driver left with him.

"Okay, this car is going to the airport," Serena declared to the other SAILOR members who walked out to the vehicles. She pointed at the jeep behind her. "And the other one is going to China."

"Yay, just love riding in these things for hours on end," Lita bitched. She tossed her stuff with Raye's.

"Have fun you two," Serena said to Amy and Mina as they climbed in their vehicle.

"Sure will," Amy replied. She found two envelopes on her seat; one with a couple thousand rupees in it and the other with plane tickets all the way to Bangalore International Airport.

"That's a lot of money," Mina said, looking at the stack of bank notes.

"Not really. It's only worth maybe about 4000 yen, total." The exchange rate was 1.6 rupee to one yen.

"Oh." Mina gave a frown.

"This is just in case of emergencies. We use the credit cards, remember?"

"Right, I forgot about that. To our Swiss bank account?" That was quickly becoming a meme in the group.

"No, there another account in the Caymans."

"The joys of modern banking," Mina griped. "See you guys later! Good luck!" She waved to the others as she and Amy drove off toward the local airport.


	25. Chapter XXIII: Alarippu gone astray

**Chapter XXIII: Alarippu gone astray.**

**0430hrs, 9 November 2013, Kanaka Nagar, Bangalore, India.**

_"The movements of Alarippu relax the dancer's mind and thereby her mind, loosen and coordinate her limbs and prepare her for the dance. ..Alarippu is most valuable in freeing the dancer from distraction and making her single-minded." T. Balasarawati_

_"Please do the needful." Common, yet antiquated Indian English saying._

* * *

"So, they want us to check out this Sudhir person." Mina was with Amy on a "special" assignment in India. They were in a rented apartment across from their target, watching the place for any activity. Raye, Lita and Serena were somewhere in China, doing their thing.

The news about the stolen Russian nukes had sent off a scare in that part of the world, and a massive search conducted by China, Russia and the United States for any missing nuclear weapons was underway. Pundits in the United States said at least the weapons that the US had or was disposing of were secure and didn't have a bad habit of appearing on boats, paid by black marketers. And, they said, at least we didn't start shootouts around nuclear weapons as well (it had been reported that an argument between individuals on the ship is what caused the explosion).

"Yep, Sudhir Reddy," Amy said, reading off the dossier on him "That's his name. Ah, he was born in 1984, went to school here in Bangalore, then joined with the Nakanishi Corporation after graduating college and has been working customer service there ever since. Suspected of contact with terrorist groups in India that are planning an attack on Japanese interests in the area."

"That must be a terrible job," Mina commented. "Doing customer service all day long? No thanks."

"He's been offered a raise and promotion just this last week. He took it as well."

"But why are we monitoring him them?" Mina asked. "He doesn't have a criminal record, he has no link to terrorists, just some very sketchy information that says he may or may not be chatting on forums with a potential wannabe terrorist. That's not much to go on. "

"That we know of."

"That we know of, but the reasoning behind Luna sending us here is really…dumb." Mina played with the zoom feature on her camera. "Because Intelligence said so. Who the fuck is in charge of Intelligence? Aren't we the ones who get the intelligence? Or are we just assassins?"

"Took you that long to figure it out huh?" Amy said. She put a finger in front of her mouth to tell Mina to be quiet for a second. She activated a program that would stop audio and video transmissions from coming out of the area for a little bit so they could talk in peace.

"Mina, ever since this program started, ever since we got blown up at Hikawa temple, ever since they told us we couldn't go back and see our parents, that they had given us up to the state, I've known something has been up. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm close to something."

"Like…?"

"I got into Kawasaki's email account. He's been talking to some people from the Nakanishi Group about the healing fluid and the marketing potential and blah blah blah. That's not the weird part. I did some checking up on the people we've had to take out, and every time, the Nakanishi group comes in and takes over their operations. Their stock has shot up over three hundred percent in the last three months."

"Wait, so we've been working for the Nakanishi Group? And the people we've killed…they weren't supporting terrorism, or dictators, or black marketeers, or evil people at all?"

"I don't know. There's no definite proof of any of this though, Mina." Amy looked through her camera at Sudhir's apartment, but there was still no activity. "It could be one big coincidence. I mean, Nakanishi is the only group that can manufacture the healing solution in quantities that we can use. And they had been planning many of these mergers for months, maybe years."

"But you don't believe that for a second, do you?"

"Of course not. But this is merely idle speculation, I don't have any proof of their intent. Unless…"

She looked at the apartment. The light had come on, and she could see Sudhir walking about, talking to somebody on his mobile.

"I have an idea," she said.

"What idea?" Mina asked.

"We're going to ask some questions."

"But they told us not to approach him, only to observe him for a twenty four hours period and…"

"Well, if we're working for Nakanishi, then he's got to have done something to piss them off. And he might have some info we can use to blow this entire thing open. Plus, we have about ten more minutes before Artemis figures out that it's not his computer screen that's fizzing out on him and starts asking us questions."

Amy and Mina left the apartment and crossed the street to Sudhir's apartment complex.

"Goddammit," Amy cursed after they had made it safely across. There wasn't a lot of traffic, but an auto rickshaw had come out of nowhere and surprised them. "If I ever see one more auto rickshaw that close to me…"

"Tell me about it," Mina agreed. "You got your weapon on you?" She checked the handbag that she was carrying. The trusty Glock 26 lay inside there.

"Yep, got mine too," Amy said. "Let's get in there."

Sudhir's apartment was on the fifth floor, accessible only by key or if someone buzzed you in. Thankfully, Amy overrode the electronic lock and accessed the stairwell in no time.

"Did you time me, like I asked?" she asked Mina on their way up the stairs.

"It was about seven seconds on that one."

"Dammit, so close to beating my record."

Amy and Mina reached the fifth floor and started for Sudhir's apartment, the last one down the hall, to the right, number 512. As they approached, they could hear him arguing with somebody on the phone.

"Mercy, look, I'm sorry that all of this happened, alright? No, no, I'm just as scared as you are, but taking this promotion was the right thing to do. Yes, even after they beat me up and left me for dead. I don't have much choice in the matter, and besides, if it makes D.D quake in his slippers, that makes me happy." Mina and Amy couldn't understand them because it was in Telugu, but they got the gist of it.

"Well, looks like we have a lovers' quarrel," Mina said.

"You would know a lot about them, wouldn't you?" Amy replied, smiling a bit.

"Oh yes I would. Am I knocking or are you?"

"I got this." Amy knocked on the whitewashed wooden door.

"Sorry, I have to go. I probably pissed them off again and now they want to have a chat with me. Okay? Bye. Bye."

Sudhir put the phone down and started toward the door. He unlocked it, but did not remove the chain, just in case. He saw two women there, one with blue hair, and other with blond, but covered up with a dupatta in order not to attract too much attention.

"What do you want?" he asked pensively.

"We just want to talk," Amy said to him kindly.

"Yeah, right," he scoffed. "We can talk right here. And no funny stuff like you did last time."

"Mr…Reddy?" Mina still couldn't believe that was a popular name down here in South India. "Look, we're not with the Nakanishi Group."

Immediately, he started to close the door. "I can't be associated with you if you're doing what I think you're doing."

Amy put her foot in the door jam and winced in pain when Sudhir tried to close the door on it.

"What did you do that caused all of this?" she asked, concealing the pain. "You must have upset the Nakanishi Group or else you wouldn't have been so scared if we mentioned their name."

"Just go," he said insistently. "Please, if you know what's good for you."

Amy looked at Mina. "Looks like we're going to do this the hard way."

While they weren't nearly as strong as Lita, Mina shoved her shoulder against the door, knocking Sudhir back. Both Amy and Mina then hit the door again, snapping the chain off the wall and opening the door.

"Alright, then," Amy said, grabbing Sudhir by the arms and dragging him to a couch. "Tell us what you did to the Nakanishi Group that's got them all riled up."

"You first," he gasped, trying to recover the wind knocked out of him.

Mina looked at Amy, then spoke to him.

"We're with the Japanese Government," she said.

"Heh, never would have guessed that," Sudhir replied. "You're English is pretty good. Can't tell you apart from some of those Americans I have to deal with every day. What branch?"

"Doesn't matter," Mina continued, trying to downplay her slight British accent. "We were sent to…observe you due to intelligence stating that you might be in contact with terrorist groups."

"Well, it depends which side you're on," he sarcastically replied. "And anyway, it's not a terrorist group, it's only one person who may or may not be involved in some grey area stuff."

"Alright, we've told our part, what's up with you?" Mina folded her arms and looked at Sudhir intently.

"Fine. I got in trouble with one of the higher-ups in the company when he came down here. I sent an email to…" He trailed off.

"Spit it out Sudhir," Amy said intently. "Otherwise we can't help you."

"I'm getting to that. I discovered a Nakanishi tracking program on a US Representative's computer, a Georgia Clemens. For whatever reason, she's under surveillance by the Nakanishi Group in America. I did not think she was aware of this fact, and so I sent her an email telling her of the situation she was in. Shortly thereafter, I was beaten up by some hired goons."

"Do you know who hired them?" Mina asked him.

"Yeah. It was a Nakanishi company head who oversaw the entire thing, personally."

"What's his name?" she continued to interrogate him, being gentle but firm.

"Well, I don't think that's his real name, but everyone calls him 'Jadeite.'"

Amy looked him up on her tablet computer she was carrying with her. "He's the head of Nakanishi Asia. A very effective worker and had increased the Nakanishi Group's hold in Asia by over three-hundred percent in the last ten years."

"So, you pissed off one of the heads of one of the most powerful corporations in the World," Mina said. "And he just let you go? With a little beating? Come on, you can do better than that. I would at least have killed you and dumped your body in an acid bath."

"Hey, I don't know!" Sudhir protested. "Maybe you should ask him."

"I'm finding all of this hard to believe," Amy joined in. "So, you find that Nakanishi is spying on members of the American Congress."

"Yes, that's what they were doing."

"And you alerted one of them to your findings." Mina and Amy were circling now around Sudhir, trying to see if he was the real deal.

"Yeah, I did that."

"And then they find out and beat you up over it," Amy said.

"They did."

"So why are you still working for them!" Mina asked. "If you're so mad at his corporation, then why haven't you quit and gone to the media or police or something like that?"

"They…they promised me a raise and a promotion if I didn't rock the boat anymore," Sudhir replied softly.

Amy and Mina stood back and let Sudhir catch his breath from the interrogation. This guy was the real deal.

"Alright Mr. Reddy," Mina said. "We believe you. We're trying to get the full story ourselves."

"Yeah, whatever." Sudhir picked himself up and staggered to the refrigerator in his kitchen, taking out some purified water.

"Hope you guys haven't been drinking the water," he said to them casually. "You'll get sick if you do."

Mina looked at Amy. She had brushed teeth with some of that water last night.

"Uh…no," Mina replied.

"Well, that's good to hear. Many of the foreigners come over and they don't know what to do, so many of them get very unwell."

"That's…yeah." Amy tried not to snicker at the horrified expression on Mina's face.

"Anyway, that's the reason I'm in trouble with Nakanishi," Sudhir said, coming back out of the small kitchen. "I don't know what Jadeite is up to, but he left for Japan a month ago and hasn't been back since."

"Is there anything else that you might have seen?" Mina asked, wondering if the growling coming from her intestines would cause more than just discomfort.

"Well, some guy from the Chinese Consulate in Mumbai would sometimes come by to ask my boss, uh Dilip Desai on how…"

'Wait, 'some guy'…?" Amy interrupted. "Would his name happen to be Hao Chung?"

"I think it was Zhong, but yeah, that's the guy."

Mina and Amy looked at each other again. "What the fuck…?" Mina muttered.

"Why was a member from the Consulate coming to meet with a Japanese company?" Amy paced up and down the main living room now. Mina sat in a chair, staring intently at Sudhir, who was drinking the glass of water he poured.

"Well, my boss always said that it was to promote cooperation between China, India and Japan, but I think it was something different."

"Like…?" Amy's mind was racing a mile a minute.

"Well, I think…it's really stupid."

"Go ahead, try us." Mina had heard worse. Especially regarding the entire pill issue with Lita. Stupid hypertension.

"I think he was having a secret relationship."

Mina and Amy both did a face palm. "That is pretty stupid," Amy replied.

"But I think it's…"

"…it's a fourteen hour drive from Mumbai to Bangalore," Amy said, "And why would he meet your boss at work, in plain sight, in the middle of the day, to have a relationship like that?! In a more open society, yeah, but not here."

"Do you think it's something other than them being lovers?" Mina asked, now more sarcastically.

"Okay, he might be giving information to Chung…Zhong…whatever, that might have to deal with our operations here."

"So he's giving information to the Chinese then."

"I don't fucking know! Besides, I haven't seen Chung in at least a year! What's he got to do with anything with Nakanishi?"

"More than you might think," Amy said. "Anything else? Like where we can find him? And how do you spell his name again?"

"He lives on company housing near the Manyata Tech Park, and it's spelled D-i-l-a-p D-e-s-a-I. Now, If you would leave me alone now and let me try to pick up what remains of my life, that would be nice."

"Fine, have a nice day…morning." Mina and Amy left, shutting the door behind them, leaving Sudhir wondering how he was going to explain all of this if Nakanishi found out again…

* * *

"Well, that was certainly interesting," Mina said, looking around the street to see if anyone had seen them go in. The street was starting to get busy, with more vehicles of every type starting to make their way down the street; trucks, buses, auto rickshaws, cars, motorbikes and even cattle driven carts.

"I didn't know people still lived like that," Mina stated, looking at a man slowly tapping a cow with a switch down the road.

"Maybe they know something we don't," Amy noted. "Come on, we have to go to see this Dilap Desai."

"Hello?! Hello?!" Artemis came back on their secret service type earpieces connected to their eyepieces.

"Yeah, what is it?" Mina said. "We're in the middle of something."

"You went out of contact for about twenty minutes there," he said. "What happened?"

"Nothing special. But we might have a lead on a contact." Amy was trying to keep everything as vague as possible.

"Ah, where did you get that information?" Artemis asked.

"The same place where you got yours to send us on this observation," Mina replied.

That wasn't very appealing to Artemis. "Oh, so we're going to play that game, are we?"

"Yeah, we are. I need a background check on a Dilip Desai. He works for Nakanishi Group, India, in Bangalore if that'll help you narrow down your search results."

"Fine, I'm looking it up." Artemis went to type the name into the computer by his workstation. He was back on the ground now, stranded in a hanger that the JASDF has reserved for the SAILOR support personnel. Luna was helping out the other team, and so he was stuck with sheparding these two around Bangalore.

"Uh…spell that."

"D-i-l-i-p D-e-s-a-i," Amy spelled out.

"…a…i. Got it. Looking now."

D.D's file was accessed through the Nakanishi Group server in Bangalore, then was transmitted directly to both Artemis' computer and Amy's HUD.

Artemis started reading the file out loud to Amy and Mina, who were simultaneously reading it as well. "Alright, he's forty years old, holds a degree in Business from the IIT-Delhi. He's…interesting…"

"What does that mean?" Mina asked. She was referring to a police report that had stated that he was an agitator for several radical groups during the 1980s before he went to college.

"According to this report, he still keeps in contact with some of his old militant group friends, although it's very low key," Artemis said. "He's no longer involved in protest activity or radical groups, having moved to a job within the Nakanishi Group, India, several years ago and being promoted to project manager for the entire CSR division."

"Well, he's a pretty good contact if you want to find some information out about Nakanishi…" Mina said.

"…Or if you want to know some people who are willing to put together a militant group," Amy finished.

"Artemis, where's the exact address?"

"It's near the Manyata Tech Park, on 1st Main Road. Sending location now." He sent the location of the house, still not knowing what was going on. But he figured that if the girls knew if something was up, he wasn't about to interrupt them when they were on a lead.

"I have it. Let's go Mina."

There was scooter outside the apartment that they were using as a home base, and in true Indian style, Mina climbed on a started it, while Amy climbed on the back.

"How do these guys do this?" Amy said, trying to sit sideways in the seat before giving up and sat facing forward.

Since it was now 0500, the call to prayer for the sizable Muslim population went out, with the imam chanting the prayers to Allah, as required the five pillars.

"That always gives me goosebumps," Mina noted. "It's kind of cool, actually." She started up the scooter. "And…we're off."

She sped off, her eyepiece HUD giving the directions and Amy clinging on for dear life.


	26. Chapter XXIV: Quit India

**Chapter XXIV: Quit India.**

**0654hrs, 9 November 2013, Manyata Tech Park, Bangalore, India.**

_"Ours is not a drive for power, but purely a non-violent fight for India's independence. In a violent struggle, a successful general has been often known to effect a military coup and to set up a dictatorship…A non-violent soldier of freedom will covet nothing for himself, he fights only for the freedom of his country." Mahatma Gandhi, "Quit India" Speech._

_"No country is perfect. You have to make it perfect." Karan Singhania, Rang de Basanti_

* * *

D.D opened his eyes at the sound of his alarm. He didn't have to get up at this time on the weekends, but he couldn't really sleep in like he used to do in his older days. The house he was staying in might have been easily at home in suburban America; white picket fences, a driveway, green(ish) lawn and even a mailbox. But despite it not being as bad as Delhi, there was still a good amount of smog blanketing the morning sky today.

He wished that the matchmaker would hurry up and find him a nice wife, but they were taking extra time with background checks, making sure that she was "pure" enough for him. Better safe than sorry then.

D.D started to sit up when someone put a hand over his mouth and slammed him back into bed.

"Mmphff!" he yelled.

"Dilip Desai?" a woman's voice said, coldly.

"Mmmpff," D.D replied.

"I thought so. You're going to answer some questions for us. I'm going to uncover your mouth now, and if you try to do anything funny, my friend here is going to slit your throat."

He turned his head to the left and saw a blond haired lady, holding a very big K-Bar knife.

"Mmphff mphff!" he nodded his head in agreement.

Amy removed her hand from his mouth and sat him back up.

"So…D.D," she asked slowly. "You speak English, right?"

"Yes…I can," he replied in Punjabi.

"Wrong answer." Mina advanced with the knife.

"Okay, yes, yes, I speak in English!" he said, dropping the communalism act.

"Let's try this again. You do speak in English?"

"Yes."

"You work for the Nakanishi Group, India as a project manager?"

"Yes, I am the project manager for the entire CSR department." D.D breathed heavily in and out, trying to remain calm in the face of a couple of stone cold killers.

"Do you know a Hao Chung?" Amy asked.

"Who?"

"Hao?" Mina said. D.D still looked a little bit confused.

"What?"

"Oh for crying out loud," Amy said in exasperation. This was turning into a "Who's on first" routine. She pulled out her tablet computer and accessed a picture of Hao Chung.

"This guy."

"No, I don't know…" D.D started to say, but the looks that Amy and Mina were giving him changed his mind. "Okay, I know him, but I heard his name was pronounced Hao Zhong, not Chung. But I haven't seen him in months or so."

"And why was he in contact with you?" Amy flipped the tablet around again and pulled up D.D's file on the radical groups and showed it to him.

D.D sighed. "I was in some money trouble after college, but I met Hao Zhong randomly at a job fair in Delhi. He helped me out with a job and then got me into the Nakanishi Group with a recommendation letter. However…"

He paused for a second, then continued on.

"…Zhong asked me for some favors. I used to be with a pretty radical crowd, yeah. But those days were behind me, I thought…when I went back to school. Zhong comes along and after helping me out, starts asking me about my more militant friends. I still sometimes keep in touch with them, but some have gone off the deep end. Like Ramesh…"

"Who's Ramesh?" Mina asked him.  
"Ramesh Modi, he…he was a bit more into it than I was. I only into that type of crowd because I didn't have many friends, but Ramesh, he was a complete die hard. He was part of the local Communist Party of India (Marxist) chapter, but they were 'too conservative' for him. So when he heard about the Naxalites…he ran off and joined up with them against the struggle of imperialism."

"Where is Ramesh now?"

"I don't know, the Army drove most of the Naxalite groups underground, and I haven't heard from him in years. Zhong only wanted a contact, not how long I had been in touch with the guy."

"Alright then." Amy and Mina backed off a little and let D.D relax for a second.

"Who are the Naxalites?" Mina whispered to Amy, as they watched D.D take a sip of water next to his bed.

"They're a group of insurgents that follow a Maoist ideology. But like he said, they've been driven underground as of late. The Indian paramilitaries have really been going after them."

D.D seemed a bit more relaxed now, so Amy let Mina press him for more information. She sat down next to him, on the bed.  
"Mr. Desai, have you had any more contact with Mr. Zhong? He's seemed to have disappeared and we kind of need to talk to him."

D.D sighed and looked around. Mina stared at him, but it was a kind glance, not the piercing one that Amy sometimes gave when she was talking to someone.

"He's been in trouble as of late," D.D replied. He was falling to the charm that was Mina Aino. "I've been holding some stuff for him, and he was going to contact me when I was to deliver the stuff."

"Trouble…? With who?" Mina studied D.D intently, looking at his eyes for any sense of hesitation or lying.

"I think it's with someone within Nakanishi, but I don't know for sure."

"He owed favors and stuff?" Amy interrupted. Mina looked at her, but turned back to D.D.

"Yeah, he was supposed to blow up a high school or something in Japan, but he only elected to destroy a road."

"With five girls on it." Mina remembered the fire and the flames…the screams…

"Hey, I don't know the details of it. Whatever it was, he didn't do a good job of it and he had to flee. He walked into my office one day, handed me this metal box thingy, gave me a mobile phone, and told me that he would contact me when he thought it was safe." D.D fidgeted in his bed, now uncomfortable at all these questions being asked of him.

"Did you get that phone call?" Mina pressed.

"Yeah, about a week ago. I'm supposed to meet with Zhong with the box late next month, and that I would have to meet him outside of the country, in Hong Kong. I took some holiday time and I'm, supposedly to meet with a matchmaker for my new wife but this takes priority…" He trailed off.

Amy and Mina looked at D.D, who had started to stare off into space. Mina nudged her head toward Amy and they both backed up a few meters to converse.

"What do you think?" Mina asked.

"I think we might get down to the bottom of all this," Amy said. "Artemis is still probably wondering why his link cut out again, so we'd better wrap this up soon."

"Fine. Mr. Desai, where is this box?"

"It's underneath my bed," He replied.

Mina ducked under the bed and found a metal box, about the size of an external hard drive, just a bit thicker and wider.

"Got it."

She pulled it out and tossed it on the bed. Mina took a look at it, but there appeared to be no obvious way to open it. In fact, it looked like it was made out of solid metal, bar the fact that it was hollow on the inside.

"Have you been able to access this?" Mina asked D.D.

"No, I haven't been able to open the damn thing," he replied.

"Uh-huh. Well, Mr. Desai, when did he say he was going to meet you?"

"Um, the 13th of December, in Chungking Mansions at 1200, at the entrance to the apartments on Nathan Street."

"Alright then, you can meet your…matchmaker somewhere else in Hong Kong. Preferably far away from Chungking Mansions, and maybe somewhere more fancy," Amy said.

"I…" D.D began to protest, but Amy cut him off.

"And don't say anything to Mr. Zhong…Chung…however you say his name, because, again, we need to really talk to him."

"Alright," D.D replied with resignation.

"Thanks. Oh, and we were never here and we're taking this box." Amy grabbed the box from Mina's hands and started walking toward the door to the bedroom.

"Uh…"

"Because it would be tragic to end your life if you opened your mouth," Mina said, quietly. "Really, it would."

"I get the point, please, just go," D.D said.

Amy and Mina left his house, leaving D.D sitting there in his bed.

"That was fun," Mina said, walking out the front door.

"It just keeps getting better and better," Amy replied, walking toward their scooter.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a black Toyota Qualis parked nearby that hadn't been there before.

"I see it," Mina stated, even before Amy had the chance to say something. They both ducked behind D.D's car, a large Mahindra Scorpio. Luckily for them, the occupants had not seen the two girls come out of the house.

Amy put the box on the ground and pulled out her Glock 26, just to be safe.

"Artemis," Mina whispered into her headset. "Artemis, are you there?"

"Whoops, gotta turn him back on," Amy said. She unjammed the frequency and Artemis was back on air.

"Hello? Why are all my calls getting dropped today?"

"We're here Artemis," Mina whispered. "Can you get a satellite feed on our position?"

"Now you want me to find out where you are?" Artemis retorted. "Come on, you're kind of leaving me out of the loop here."

"Artemis." Mina hissed. "Do. It."

Getting Mina mad was not one of the things you wanted to do in life. Artemis complied immediately, and brought up their location.

"I've got you located on the GPS. I'm bringing up a satellite feed now." The satellite feed was actually from a KH-13 satellite used by the CIA that had been secretly sent up last year. The CIA didn't know it, but some of the hardware that had been designed (by the Nakanishi Group no less), had a backdoor that would let the Japanese sneak in a few hours worth of intel if they really wanted it.

Both Mina's and Amy's eyepiece HUDs lit up with the live feed.

"Artemis, can you focus in on that black SUV out there?" Amy asked.

"I can try." Artemis focused the KH-13's camera on the SUV.

"Can you get a registration number or something?" Amy said. "I'd rather not poke my head out."

"I have one…" Artemis scanned the front of the car, and obtained a license number. "It's a car that has been registered to one of the office of the Chief Minister of Karnataka."

"Oh dear," Mina muttered. "This just got so much better." She peaked around the corner. The black SUV was still there.

"If they know about D.D talking to us…" Amy said.

"…They might try to kill him," Mina finished. "Artemis, is there anyone else in the neighborhood?"

"Checking." Artemis pulled the camera back and looked at the entire group of houses. "That's affirmative, I have several cars with human heat signatures blocking all the exits."

"Shit." Mina had no idea what to do. "Artemis…Can…you…uh…shit."

Amy quickly ran through a checklist of what options they could take. They could sit here and do nothing, at which point D.D would certainly be killed off, along with them. Starting a firefight in a residential neighborhood was not a good idea, and they were outnumbered by opponents who most likely had automatic weapons and body armor. If they could only get someone with bigger firepower to come in and help them…

"Artemis," Amy said after a moment of thought. "Are there any paramilitary units in the area?"

"Paramilitary? Like the police?"

"Kind of."

India has one of the largest groups of paramilitaries in the world, clocking in at about one million members in addition to the regular military. Their missions ranged from counter-terrorism, anti-drug trafficking, border patrol, counter-insurgency, riot control, special operations, and guarding politicians. There had to be some unit nearby that could be tricked into providing assistance.

"Um…um…" Artemis started monitoring traffic on the radio net, doing internet searches, and scanning through databases of all known paramilitary groups in India. Within five seconds, one popped up.

"Okay, I have one. The 108th South Indian Defence Force, formed in 2011 and stationed at the Military Police training center in Bangalore."

"How far away is that?" Mina asked. She was still looking at the SUV. No movement.

"It's…it's…"

"Artemis, how far away are they?" Amy hissed.

He gulped as he furiously typed in the directions. "They're about thirty minutes away from where you're located."

"Can you get them to us?"

"I don't speak any languages that they speak," he protested. "My English is really bad as well."

Amy sighed in irritation, but Mina reassured him. "Thanks Artemis," she said.

"Maybe I could just contact them directly," Amy said. "Just say that they're a terrorist attack underway near the tech park and that we need their help."

"Help who though?" Mina asked. "We can't tell them that we're Japanese."

Amy thought on that for a second.

"Didn't that Sudhir guy tell us we had accents like his customers?"

"Well, yeah…" Mina said, then realized where she was going with this. "His customers are American...and we have American passports…"

"…back at the apartment," Amy stated.

"Shit, how are we going to get those?"

"We'll have to bluff our way to that point," Amy said. "And you seem pretty good at doing that, Mina."

She smiled at that. "Alright then, so how do we kick this thing off?"

"We just have to hold out for thirty minutes. They can't reach this house…if he dies, Zhong will get spooked out and he'll cancel the meeting. Artemis?"

"Yeah?"

"Put me in contact with the head of police for this area and I'll take it from there," she said.

"Gotcha." Artemis started making the necessary calls to make sure this thing worked.

"We can do it quietly, too." Mina held something up from her purse. It was a suppressor.

"I didn't want a repeat of Korea."

"Nice going, got an extra?" Amy was impressed.

"Right here." She handed an extra one to her.

Mina and Amy affixed the suppressors to their Glock 26s and swung around the car to engage the hostiles in the SUV.


	27. Chapter XXV: Arangetram

**Chapter XXV: Arangetram**

**0750hrs, 9 November 2013, Shanti Nagar, Bangalore, India**

_"Men, money and materials cannot by themselves bring victory or freedom. We must have the motive-power that will inspire us to brave deeds and heroic exploits." Subhas Chandra Bose._

* * *

This was not a good day for Colonel Shanthi Krishnan of the 108th South Indian Defence Force. They had been called up for some stupid training exercise, when they should have been resting, getting ready for the series of drills they would be conducting next week with the military.

"Can you explain to me why we're being called up?" she asked the Joint Commissioner for Police for Bangalore. "We are going to be doing drills all next week and unless this had something to do with it, we don't need to be out here, doing more exercises."

"Look, it's not an exercise," the JCP told her.

"What do you mean?" Krishnan eyed the short, balding man in front of her.

"I got a phone call from an American. I don't know how they got my phone number, but they explained that they were in trouble at the housing complex near Manyan Tech Park and that they were in real danger from terrorists."

"No offense," Krishnan said, "But I don't see why we should be called out to protect a couple of Americans. Shouldn't that be left up to the local police? This unit was formed to protect _Indian_ interests."

She put extra emphasis on "Indian".

"I understand Colonel, but how is that going to look to the overseas businesses that conduct operations here? If foreigners start being killed off, our economy tanks within a couple of months because MNCs don't want to deal with their own personnel being attacked."

Colonel Krishnan sighed and put her hand on her hip. So much for Indian interests and safety; they might as well be working for the British all over again. Gandhiji could straight to hell for all that they cared.

"Fine, I'll get a platoon of soldiers over there right away," she said in capitulation.

"Thank you Colonel," the JCP said. She saluted, American style with the hand facing in and down, and then left the JCP's temporary office. They were in the Military Police Academy, and so they technically weren't supposed to be there due to them being civilians and…yeah, it was a mess.

"Dammit," she said, walking out of that irritable man's office.

The one thing that made the 108th SIDF special from the other paramilitary units in India is that they were almost exclusively an American trained unit. Several government and PMCs had come in and set up the training facility in Bangalore and another one in Vellore, in Tamil Nadu. They were also one of the best equipped…sometimes. There was a mix of cold-war era battle rifles and high tech assault rifles with rail mounts and everything.

There was one other thing as well.

It was a completely female unit. Every single one of its personnel was a female, either a graduate of college, transferred in from the police or military, or simply saw the advert on a side of a wall and walked into the recruiting station. The reason for this was that mixed gender units had a significant amount of sexual assaults and harassment toward the females, which was very bad for morale and unit cohesion. In the future, that would change but for now this was the only way to prevent that type of unit disorder.

The minimum requirements were simple: Tenth-standard grade education, must have lived in one of the four South Indian states for five years, the ability to read and write in your native tongue, and no (debilitating) physical defects. That was it. For officers, it would be "any" three year college degree from an accredited university/college.

The size of the 108th SIDF was about five-hundred enlisted, with about thirty officers for the entire group. There was also a reserve component, like the American National Guard, which numbered about 1000 enlisted and 50 officers. They only drilled a weekend a month, two weeks a year, while the rest were active duty, ready to respond to a crisis at a moment's notice.

At first, it had gotten a lot of snickers and mockery; women couldn't do this or that, let alone fire a weapon or prevent a terrorist attack. And even to this very day, they still hadn't been called out for anything serious.

That was about to change. Not only because of this, but events yet to come.

"Lieutenant Iyer!" Col. Krishnan was outside the office now and heading toward a jeep.

"Yes, Colonel?" Lieutenant Kavitha Iyer snapped to attention and saluted.

"Get your platoon together and loaded up into transport, we've got a mission."

"This isn't a training exercise?"

Krishnan shook her head. "Not today it isn't. This is the real deal."

"It's about time," Iyer said back to her. "What's the mission?"

"You're going to the Manyata Tech Park Housing, about thirty minutes away. There's some foreigners that called the JCP and said that there were terrorists all over the place."

"That's…that's it?" Iyer looked really annoyed at that. "We're sticking our necks out for some white people?"

"Hey, I just do what the JCP tells me to. And the CP. And the Chief Minister."

"You mean, the Chief Ministers of every state in South India?" Iyer pointed out.

"Yes, thank you Lieutenant, for pointing that fact out," Krishnan replied sarcastically. "Just get your platoon together and we'll get this over with."

"Yes Ma'am." She saluted and went to collect her unit.

* * *

"So, did you hear about Savitha?"

Sergeant Neela Prasad and Corporal Shruthi Shetty were gossiping about one of the command sergeants in the unit as they waited by the barracks. It was a humid day, like many days in Bangalore.

Prasad (that wasn't even her real last name…it was something different, but she changed it to avoid being outcaste) had been born in an obscure part of Karnataka, in a town named Raichur. Her mother, a devadasi trapped by the oppressive caste system, barely managed to save her daughter from the same fate that she had suffered; at around six, she was dedicated to the god Yellamma (or Renuka). At sixteen or eighteen, a "deflowering" ceremony took place, usually with a male relative (an uncle, most commonly). She would spend the next twenty years being passed around as a mistress, a prostitute, a dirty whore. After her prime days were behind her, she would be discarded like a toy, and forced to take up working in the fields or some other meaningless labor. More than likely, she would have a child out of the many men she would have slept with, and if it was a daughter, the same process would start all over again. But instead, Neela Prasad was rescued by an NGO in Bangalore that specialized in helping such girls, and given a new lease on life. After graduating 10th standard, she joined up and had been promoted rapidly, leading a squad of troops.

"I heard she had sex with like, ten guys last week." Shetty continued on with her gossip. Sex was something that was rarely talked about in contemporary Indian culture, but as with everything, Western values were slowly trickling in. Prasad endured Shetty's inane gossip, but tried not to think about what would have become of her if she had stayed in Raichur. Most of the people in the unit did not know of Prasad's Devadasi heritage. To say it would cause problems would be an understatement if they found out.

"At the same time? That's...how would that work again?" Prasad took a sip of chai that she was drinking from. The hot, brown beverage was brewed from black tea leaves while at the same time, spices like cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and anise, and milk were added while the tea was boiling.

Oh, and lots of sugar. Lots and Lots of sugar. The further down you went in India, the more sweet the tea got.

"That's just wrong," Shetty said. "I mean, how is she ever going to get a husband if she keeps acting like that? My akka got someone right away after amma got that really good astrologer from Mangalore. I'm thinking about using him as well for my marriage. I hope that we get a match and that we can raise lots and lots of kids and we can have a scooter and a refrigerator and maybe even a UV filter for the water tap."

"Yeah, uh-huh. That's the point though," Prasad replied, taking another sip from the stainless steel cup. She tried to steer Shetty back onto topic…or what passed for one at least. "All those western ideas she gets from television and the internet and stuff like that." Not that there was anything wrong with the internet...

"And she has a college education," Shetty pointed out, going along with Prasad. "And she lords it over all of us normal grunts, just like Lt. Iyer, except we don't have to put up with Lt. Iyer every day." Shetty's idea of lording though, was just a quick mention that you went to college, in passing. Shetty and Prasad had just talked to Chowdary yesterday, and it had come up that she had attended university in America. Some obscure Norwegian college in the middle of the Midwest…what was the name of it again? Whatever.

"Yeah, that too," Prasad sarcastically said. "Me? I was lucky enough to get to 10th standard." She remembered the fond memories of the NGO in Bangalore that provided her with an actual childhood…

"That's true. Did you go to puja today?" Shetty asked. She was always going to puja at one of the local temples. "I went to the Big Bull one yesterday, but it was really crowded. And since the Muslim New Year started, traffic has been really bad as of late."

Prasad shook her head no.

"No, I didn't. I'm going to go next month to Tirupathi and do that stuff with my family. You've been to Tirupathi, right?"

Shetty took another sip of chai. "It was pretty crowded. There was a couple lakhs worth of people there, and I think four crore people visit there every year."

"That a lot of fucking people," Prasad commented. It had been quite a shock coming to Bangalore; with "only" nine million people, it was quite larger than Raichur.

"That's a lot of fucking, period," Shetty said back.

Just then they heard a sound of a jeep pulling up near their barracks.

Prasad and Shetty turned around to see Lt. Iyer pulling up in a jeep with Col. Krishnan.

"Oh yay, here comes everyone's favorite Tamilian. Just what I wanted to see today," Prasad bitched. She set her stainless steel chai cup on the group and stood up to salute Krishnan and Iyer, who got out of the jeep and started walking toward them.

"Good Morning, Sergeant, Corporal," Col. Krishnan said in Kannada, saluting back. Iyer did the same.

"Jai Hind," they replied. That was the appropriate response that they were supposed to give; Jai Hind means "Hail to the Motherland (India)".

"Very good. We've got a mission today," Krishnan said stoically. "Lt. Iyer?"

"I am going to lead a platoon of 108th SIDF troops to the Manyata Tech Park Housing area, which is located about thirty minutes from here." Despite being a Tamil, she understood all the South Indian languages, plus English, plus Hindi (much to her irritation). Knowing lots of languages wasn't too terribly uncommon down here.

"What's the situation?" Prasad asked.

"There's some foreigners who say that there's a large group of terrorists there, and that there's going to be trouble there soon."

"Why are we sticking our neck…" Shetty started, but Iyer cut her off.

"I know, I know, let's just get this over with."

Sgt. Prasad crossed her arms in disagreement, but there really wasn't much they could do about it.

"Fine, I'll get the troopers rounded up, and then we can get moving. Let me get Sgt. Pillai and then we'll have everyone together." She saluted, along with Cpl. Shetty and they ran off to get the entire platoon organized.

"That was easier than expected," Krishnan said, watching them run off and start yelling at everyone in the barracks to get out for a mission.

"They can be so lazy sometimes," Iyer added. "But today I guess, something's different."

* * *

Ten minutes later, the entire (understrength) platoon of two squads numbering nine soldiers each was organized into five Toyota Qualises and they were moving along toward the Manyata Tech Park.

Col. Krishnan and Lt. Iyer, along with SSgt. Savitha Chowdary were in the lead vehicle when they got a report over their radio from the local police.

"Hey, this is Unit 6-5 is reporting heavy gunfire coming from the Tech Park Housing complex," an officer on the radio said. "We need additional backup."

"Say again 6-5," the dispatcher said.

"Gunfire, at Manyata Tech Park Housing Complex, requesting backup."

"Standby. 108th SIDF, how do you read, over."

"We are receiving, over," Col. Krishnan said. They were on friendly relations with most of the police departments, and they had notified of the 108th's deployment into the area.

"Roger. Standby for additional orders from the JCP."

"What's going on now?" Iyer asked her .

"I don't know."

"Colonel, stand by for traffic," the dispatcher said. "JCP wants you to eliminate threat at Housing Complex by any means, break. Do so without incurring civilian casualties. Over."

"Received, break. How many civilians in area, and how many hostiles, over." Krishnan wanted to know what they were up against.

"Approximate 100 civilians in multistory houses, hostiles are unknown, over." Unfortunately, that wasn't much help.

"Roger. Out."

"Looks like things are heating up," SSgt. Chowdary noted. "Haven't seen this stuff heat up since I was in the Sudan."

"Which one?" Iyer asked.

"I think it was South Sudan, but I can never remember these things," she replied.

"We're coming up on the Housing complex," the driver said to Krishnan.

"Thanks, pull up to those police cars over there." She reached for her radio and transmitted to the entire team. "All units, this is Devi actual, standby for deployment."

The convoy pulled up next to some police SUVs that were blocking the entrance to the housing complex. A gaggle of civilians was running away from their homes toward the police, egged on by the shooting in the background. The police were pathetically armed, with bolt action Lee-Enfield SMLE Mark III used during WWII, only chambered for the 7.62mm x 51mm round instead of .303 British.

"That's a lot of gunfire," Krishnan said as they got out of the vehicle. "Whatever is going on in there, it's not good. Iyer, you have the map?"

"Right here."  
Iyer spread out the map of the housing complex and the group of soldiers gathered around it. Krishnan had to only look at it for a second to consider the tactical options. There was as park at the north end, with several houses and streets to boot. The south end was the same, minus the park. The development was not yet complete and therefore, there were open lots and empty houses.

"Alright, this housing complex is only about a kilometer or so square. Iyer, have the police cordoned off the area?"

"Affirmative," Iyer said.

"So, this is what we're going to do." Krishnan got out a pen and started circling on the map. "Sergeant Pillai? Take your squad up to the North end of the housing development, where the park is." Pillai was another of the platoon sergeants, from Karnataka.

Krishnan continued on. "Sergeant Prasad will take the South end, and you'll do a full sweep of the area. SSgt. Chowdery?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Take a fire team from Prasad's squad and do a sweep of the perimeter."

"Ma'am, that' a bad idea," Prasad started to protest, but Krishnan cut her off.

"Sorry, but your squad has better weapons than Pillai's squad, and you have more experience as well. I don't want anything getting out of here. Clear the houses and yards, and make sure that park is clear. Pillai, I don't want somebody hiding in there who then gives us more trouble."

"Understood," Prasad said, trying to conceal her nervousness. There was some more gunfire, single shots from an AK47, then another long burst.

"We have to get in there," Krishnan said intently. "Alright, any questions?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"Stay safe everyone. Move out."

* * *

Prasad checked her M16A4, complete with red dot sight, foregrip, and a flashlight.

"That's a fancy weapon you've got there," one of the police officers said to her as she organized her squad (now a fire team) to go in.

"Yeah, thanks," she replied busily. There were four soldiers in her group, Corporal Shetty, armed with a MG4 (with Prasad, that made 'Alpha'), and two soldiers armed with MP5A5s (they made 'Bravo').

"Chandra, Jyothi, take the right side of the street, and we'll take the left, bounding overwatch," she said to the team as they ran down the road toward where the fighting was happening.

"Got it," Chandra replied. She and Jyothi ducked behind a car and watched the road in front of them; there were two houses on the right . There was still no activity, but the gunfire was getting close.

"Road is clear," Prasad said. "Move up."

"This is Kali-53 to Devi Actual." Pillai was on the radio. "We have contact, several individuals armed with AK-47s and grenades. Engaging."

"Looks like Pillai is getting her combat cherry popped," Shetty said to Prasad, watching section Bravo move up.

"That's…one way of putting it," Prasad replied. "This is Durga 52 to Devi Actual. Negative contact, proceeding with mission."

"Affirmative," was the reply from Iyer. Krishnan was busy with the maps and calling in an extra platoon; they might need it.

"Alright, Bravo, clear out those houses on the right there, I'm taking Alpha to the left to see…"

An AK-47 interrupted their conversation from a window on the top of the one of the houses.

"Contact at one o'clock!" Shetty brought her MG4 to bear and fired off a burst, spitting out several 5.56mm bullets and sending the expended brass clanging on the ground. The firing stopped.

"Bravo, check that house!" Prasad yelled. Bravo team moved quickly and kicked in a door to clear the house.

"Come on, we have to see if there's more baddies on the left," Shetty said to Prasad.

"Fine, move out."

Prasad and Shetty ran over to the next street over and right into another firefight.

* * *

"Goddammit, this was not a great idea," Amy said, cowering down next to the SUV that they had shot up a minute earlier. Unfortunately, the SUV was armored, and it had firing ports out of the window so the occupants could fire with relative safety behind bullet-resistant glass. The only way they had gotten into the SUV is when an idiot in the car opened up his door to see if they had killed the pair, and was promptly shot down by Mina.

"You're telling me," Mina griped, ducking as an errant bullet snapped by. She popped up, fired a couple of shots, then ducked down again. "Artemis, what's the ETA on the paramilitaries?"

"They're right on your position!"

Mina checked around the SUV again and saw two soldiers running down the road, one armed with a machine gun and another an M16A4.

"I see them," Mina replied. "Amy, put away your weapons, quick!"

Both Mina and Amy stuffed their weapons in their purses and pretended to be cowering in fear.

Suddenly, several more AK-47s opened up from a group of houses on their right, and the two soldiers flopped down on the ground, trying to get to cover.

"Oh shit, they're in trouble!" Amy said. "We have to do something."

"Um…" Mina made a snap decision. She pulled out her Glock again and started firing at one of the houses.

"Mina what are doing?!" Amy yelled.

"Cover me!" she said. Mina dashed forward, avoiding bullets fired from the houses. Amy pulled out her weapon and started firing at an AK-47 pointing out of a second-story window, and the person firing it fell back.

Mina continued to run forward, to where the two soldiers were hiding near a destroyed car. They didn't see her, as they were too busy trying not to get killed by the hail of gunfire.

"Okay, gotta stay fly…" Mina looked at the house where all the gunfire was coming from; there were two shooters with AKs on the bottom floor, with two more on the top.

"I see you…" She lifted her Glock 26 and fired a couple of shots. The ching! Ching! Of the slide retracting and ejecting the cartridge rang out, but was overshadowed by the chatter of the AK47s that the terrorists were firing.

Luckily for her, that was all she needed to cover her fire from her suppressed weapon, and two of the terrorists on the bottom floor fell down, shot in the head.

"Hey, two of them went down!" Shetty yelled out, in Telugu.

"Where did that shot come from?" Prasad asked. She looked around, but didn't see anyone other than a civilian cowering behind a large SUV down the road. Taking advantage of the lack of fire from the bottom floor, Prasad whipped around the car she was hiding behind and snapped off five shots at the top floor of the house. Shetty did the same, except she depressed the trigger longer, letting fifteen or so rounds rip into a windowsill and riddling a terrorist with bullets.

Mina had slipped into a drainage ditch near the road and disassembled her Glock there, tossing it into a puddle of muddy water.

"Goddammit," she muttered to herself. The drainage ditch smelled of rotting food, piss, shit, and everything else that humans managed to throw in there. Even in a well-developed neighborhood like this, the amount of trash that accumulated would have had any neighborhood association in the US flipping out beyond belief. "Amy, Amy, come in, over." She hit the transmit button on her glasses that she wore.

"Yeah, I saw you fall into that drainage ditch there," she replied. "You've got two tangos headed your way." She raised her pistol and took aim.

"Hold your fire," Mina hissed into the radio. "They're the paramilitaries."

"Shit, what do we do now?" Amy kept training her weapon down range, watching the soldiers approach Mina.

"You're the smart one! I've destroyed my weapon and now I'm going to get rid of my radio and eyepiece HUD."

"I'll have to do that as well. Here goes nothing."

Amy hit the transmit button talk to Artemis. "Artemis, we're going dark for a little bit, we're fine, don't worry."

"What do you mean, don't worry?" Artemis started to ask more questions, but he was cut off, not by a jamming program, but by Amy breaking her eyepiece and accessories. She looked around the corner of the SUV and saw that the two soldiers were still searching the road, and were about a couple meters from Mina's position. Seeing that they were a safe amount of distance away, she grabbed the mysterious metal box, quickly crawled to the drainage ditch and slid down, tossing her gear into a stagnant puddle of brackish water.

"Glad I don't have to drink that," she said to herself, watching her equipment sink beneath the muddy water and silt. She put the box in her purse, and hoped that the Indians wouldn't get too suspicious over it.

Over by Mina's position, Prasad and Shetty had found her.

"Put your hands where I can see them!" Prasad yelled, in Telugu. Predictably, Mina couldn't understand them, and she didn't have the equipment to help her translate. Not that it would have helped much anyway, since the stupid HUD was still in beta.

"Hands, up!" Shetty said, in very broken English. She had learned that from some Hindi movie actually…maybe it was _My Name is Khan_ or something like that.

"Okay, I'm putting my hands up," Mina complied. She raised her hands in the air and stood up from where she was squatting near the puddle that had all of her disposed equipment. Please don't look there, please don't look there…

"Shetty, search her," Prasad ordered. Shetty approached Mina and patted her down, making sure to check everywhere and not miss everything.

"Hey, that tickles," Mina protested.

"Nothing here," Shetty said. "She does have a nice figure."

"Didn't think you swung that way," Prasad replied.

"Very funny."

Mina was still trying to get used to the smells in India, and Shetty was not helping. It seemed like she smelled like BO and had a bad case of gingivitis at the same time, coupled with the sewage in the drainage canal and it was not a pretty sight.

"Are…any…you?" Prasad asked in her limited English.

"Are there more people like me?" Mina said, filling in the massive gaps in Shetty's sentence.

"Ah." Prasad did that head-bobbing thing that most Indians are known for.

Mina didn't really get it, but figured that Prasad was asking for Amy. "Yeah…she's over there." She pointed to where D.D's house was.

"Shetty, check it out," Prasad ordered.

"What is this? Why do I have to check everything out?" Shetty protested.

"Because I'm higher ranking, now do it."

"Fine."

Shetty jogged over to D.D's house and found Amy in the ditch, (pretending) to look very confused and scared.

"Is your hair naturally like that?" Shetty asked Amy, waddling down to where Amy was lying in the ditch. She was clutching her purse, with the box inside of it. "I've never seen anyone with blue hair."

"Uh…"

"Oh, that's right, you can't understand me." Shetty sighed. "Foreigners. Hands…up."

Amy complied, putting her hands in the hair and letting Shetty do a search. After that, she and Amy walked over to where Prasad and Mina were standing, by the wrecked car they had been hiding behind during the firefight.

"This is Durga 52, we have two civilians here. They appear to be our foreigners, over."

"That's good news, 52," Devi actual replied. "Bring them to our OP and we'll take over from there, out."

"Roger, out. Let's move you two." Prasad and Shetty prodded the two girls to move along to the front of the housing complex, blissfully unaware of their real identities.

* * *

"Who the hell authorized that strike?!" Jadeite had been on the phone for the last five hours, trying to get the mess cleaned up. "Do we own any of news outlets? Good, prevent any story from going out on this…I don't know, make something up? Diwali? Wasn't that six days ago? Just say that it was a bunch of surplus firecrackers going off and that it was nothing. Fine, yes, thank you Chief Minister."

Jadeite turned off his mobile and slammed it into his bed. This is what had gone down: the Chief Minister had gotten some of his goons to take out D.D. after they had figured out that someone was talking to foreign agents about…something. He panicked, thinking that he would be found out due to the bribes that Nakanishi paid him each year to keep quiet about certain indiscretions, mainly involving the suppression of labour unions, activists and anti-globalization groups. It was going to cost a significant amount of money to keep everyone quiet about this event, to make the police "forget" that there was a massive gunfight, then make witnesses suddenly "unremember" what had happened to their houses and to prevent anything else from leaking to the press. It was going to be a massive operation and Nakanishi could afford it, but this was just ridiculous.

Jadeite sighed and looked around his sparse apartment in Tokyo. There was basically a bed, a laptop computer, almost no furniture and no food in the fridge.

He was tapped into the SAILOR transmissions, but they kept fading out sometimes, and even with Nakanishi's technological resources it would be impossible to keep tabs on the SAILOR team if they kept finding ways to circumvent their tracking devices on their HUD eyepieces. Amy didn't know it, but when she cut Artemis out of the loop, she also cut Jadeite out of the loop as well.

He couldn't confirm if the two people in custody were part of the SAILOR team, but he did know that they had a mission there. D.D was now in hiding, under government protection and was staying put. But they were slated to leave soon and there was no reason for them to be at the firefight at the Manyata Tech Park. Jadeite didn't want to alert Beryl; this would put a complete damper on her plans and anyway, it wasn't that bad of a situation…was it?

* * *

"Firecrackers?" Krishnan said. "Who the hell is reporting this?"

"Ma'am, it's on all the networks," the JCP said. "The Chief Minister of Karnataka wants this incident kept under wraps."

"But we did great out there, I want the public to know of our success and of the danger that we face every day!"

"I'm sorry Colonel," the JCP replied. "Let the Americans go. We cannot afford to lose any more business, especially the Nakanishi Group here in Bangalore. The effect on the economy would be…"

"I know, I know!" Krishnan snapped back. "It would be fucking devastating right? Keep telling yourself that."

She stormed out of the office and slammed the door behind her.

"Goddammit," she hissed.

"What was that all about?" Lt. Iyer asked her.

"Nothing, nothing, politics as usual."

"What are we going to do about the Americans?"

"Let them go. It was just the wrong place and the wrong time for them." Krishnan didn't believe that for a second, but there was no evidence proving that those two girls had done anything wrong. They didn't have any passports on them, but from what they were telling them at least, they were American tourists staying in a friend's flat near Kanaka Nagar for a couple of weeks or so, and that they were scheduled to leave the following day on a flight to Tokyo.

"Are you sure about that?" Iyer protested. "We did find ammunition that did not match the terrorists weapons on site and…"

"Whoever they were fighting, they're long gone by now. Is that Dilip Desai character in protective custody?"

"Yes, he's here at the military police barracks until we can move him to our training facility in Vellore."

"And the men who attacked him?"

Iyer flipped through her notes, written on a memo pad stained with chai and some random blood from when she had cut herself climbing over a barbed wire fence. "They were local goons. They aren't saying anything and the most that we can get out is that somebody hired them, wearing a mask and paid them upfront 5000Rs each to go to this task."

Krishnan rolled her eyes and groaned, putting her hand over her face in frustration. "This is a complete mess. We do great, can't report it. We have to let the Americans go because the Chief Minister said so, and the surviving criminals won't talk. Wonderful." She walked out of the building, with Lt. Iyer in tow to go see where Amy and Mina were being kept.

* * *

"So…where are you from?" Prasad asked in Kannada to Amy.

Amy shrugged. She had no idea what Prasad or any of the other soldiers there were trying to say. All that she knew was that they had no idea who she or Mina were. They had disassembled their weapons and had thrown them in a small gulley, ensuring that they would not be found out. The local police were pathetically inept at doing their job; besides finger printing and some mug shots, they hadn't looked for GSR, or checked their purses, or done anything besides process them and then turn them over to the 108th SIDF. Amy prayed that they didn't look inside their purses because the metal box was there, and if they found it, there was going to be some explaining to do.

The room they were in was a sparse holding cell that smelled like piss and body odor, with one window to keep the light coming in…and the bugs as well.

"These girls are pretty dumb," Prasad said (in Kannada) to Shetty. "I mean, they get invited over to that Desai's how, and then claim they don't know what happened afterward. Got drunk or something like that."

Shetty couldn't speak Kannada, having been born in Andhra Pradesh and having been raised in the small town of Zahirabad all of her life, she spoke Telugu. But like most people in India, she understood what Prasad was saying, and although Prasad couldn't respond in Telugu, she could understand was Shetty was saying and form the appropriate response.

"Hey, I would have done the same in my younger years," Shetty retorted.

"You're only twenty one!" Prasad said.

"Still! I would have done something completely stupid like that." Shetty picked at her ear, wondering why it itched so much.

"Thanks for your vote of confidence."

Amy and Mina were still sitting there, watching the two banter on like two old ladies.

"Are Indians always like this?" Mina asked Amy. "I mean, I knew some in the UK when I was studying there, but they weren't like this."

Amy again, shrugged. "I'm as just as confused as you are on what's going on."

Mina eyed the two soldiers. One was about twenty one, long-ish hair tied neatly in a long French braid that came down to her back, midway. The other looked to be about twenty three, shorter hair (with some gray ones!) and a little bit plump in the waist area. Both wore khaki petticoats and blouses, complemented by nametags (in Kannada and Telugu, respectively, and rendering them unreadable to Mina), some medals and ribbons, and a holstered pistol on their waist.

Prasad let out a massive belch and seemed to be rather pleased with herself on that one.

"I'm glad that they switched out the caterers and stuff," she continued on with Shetty. "Their paper masala dosa was too wet."

"Glad it wasn't just me who noticed that," Shetty said to Prasad, rocking back in forth in her chair, staring back at Mina. "She's got nice blonde hair. Wish I could have hair like that. Maybe I could get a real nice husband someday if I had hair like that."

There wasn't really a word for blonde in Telugu (and the one that did exist was extremely complicated), so she used the English word "blonde" mixed in with her Telugu.

"She looks like Rani Mukerji," Prasad noted. "If she had blonde hair."

"No, no, more like Kajol, with blonde hair."  
"I still say Rani," Prasad insisted. "And why are you using Bollywood people anyways? Shouldn't you be using Tollywood actors instead?"

While those two were arguing, the only word that Mina or Amy could understand was the word "blonde", which was spoken several times in Prasad and Shetty's animated conversation.

"Okay, now it's getting weird," Mina said to Amy. "All I can understand is 'blonde' and that's only one person in this room who has blonde hair."

"They might ask for your autograph soon enough," Amy joked. Mina glared at her and continued to stare at the two soldiers talking to each other.

Suddenly, the door opened to the room, and they stopped talking, coming to attention. It was Col. Krishnan and Lt. Iyer.

"Ma'am," Prasad said to Col. Krishnan.

"At ease," she said to those two. "We're supposed to let these two foreigners go."

"About time," Shetty said, drawing a glare from Prasad.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Prasad said to Krishnan. "I don't think who they say they are."

"Look, that may be true, but we don't have anything to back that up now, do we?" Krishnan replied. "And besides, we got the real bad guys in this case, so we'd better let it go before it gets out of hand."

"Of course," Prasad said smarmily to Col. Krishnan.

"I'm sorry about that," Krishnan said to Amy and Mina in English. "You're free to go. I know you told us earlier that you had a flight to catch in twenty four hours, so we obviously won't keep you waiting."

"Thank you so much," Amy said, trying to keep some sort of American English accent going. She had been doing pretty good so far, and the Indians' English skill varied considerably, so she could get away with some of the "l/r" sounds that Japanese people were usually made fun of. "I hope that we haven't been an inconvenience."

"You haven't. However, before you go, I would like to send my adjunct, Lt. Iyer here, to your flat with you and make sure that you have your passports, and that who you say you are, is the actual truth."

Amy and Mina thought "Oh shit," at the same time. Not only had they compromised one intelligence source, they might compromise the other one with police and paramilitaries crawling all over the place. Plus, they had left cameras and computers, and even some weapons out in the open when they had left to talk to D.D earlier that day. Mina knew where the passports were, by the entrance to their flat but…

"Of course, we'd be happy to show who we are," Amy said to Krishnan, concealing her fear that she felt down.

One hour later, they were back at their flat in Kanaka Nagar, nervously waiting outside as Lt. Iyer communicated back with HQ.

"This is Lt. Iyer, we've reached the location, Major," she said into her mobile phone, one of those cheap Nokia or Samsung ones that you could buy for less than 500Rs or something like that.

"Uh-huh, thanks." Amy barely hear the response on the other end of the phone, but it was another woman.

"Where is Colonel Krishnan?" Iyer asked the other person on the line.

"She's out right now, I'm in charge for the moment."

"Okay, thanks Major John." She hung up the phone.

"Who the hell has a last name of John?" Mina asked Amy.

"Stop asking me questions I don't know," Amy snapped back. "I am not an expert on Indian culture."

"Sorry," Mina replied sarcastically, looking at her nails. They were damaged from the recent firefight, with the middle one on the right hand being chipped off and several others having been cracked.

"I apologize for that," Lt. Iyer said, putting the mobile phone away in her front pocket. "Please, show me to your flat." The P226 pistol in her holster, clearly visible on her hip, was a more telling reminder if they refused.

"Of course," Mina said.

They walked up a couple flights of steps to their room on the third floor. Amy still hadn't thought of anything, and was looking at Mina for anything to get them out of this mess.

"Uh, what was your name again?" Mina suddenly asked Lt. Iyer as they exited the stairwell and approached their room.

"Iyer."

"Ire?" Mina had not heard of that name before.

"No, Ai-yur."

"I see. Look, Iyer, do you have to come into the room with us?" she asked her. "It's a really mess in there."

"I'm sorry Miss Mina, but my orders are to just take a look around. You must understand, it is my job." Iyer smiled reassuringly on that one, showing the somewhat stained set of her upper row of teeth. The bottom row was decent at least.

"No really," Mina objected. She stopped in front of her and turned around. Amy, seeing her chance, moved ahead and unlocked the door. "It's a goddamn mess in there and you don't want to go in there. I mean, ah…"

"What do you mean?" Iyer said suspiciously, peering over Mina's shoulders to see what Amy was up to. She had just unlocked the door and headed into the room, grabbing the passports near a desk at the front of the room.

"It's just that…well, we had some company yesterday." Mina pretended to be embarrassed, trying to send a hint to Iyer. "Going over to D.D's place was…an afterparty. A time-pass, if you think of it that way."

Amy was rushing around, trying to hide two pistols that had been left in the open, concealing the cameras and binoculars, putting folders and other intelligence information away.

"I won't tell anyone, if that'll help," Iyer reassured, sensing Mina's (fake) embarrassment.

"Okay then," Mina said, turning around and walking toward the door, Lt. Iyer in tow. She just hoped that she had bought Amy enough time to get rid of whatever evidence there was left out in the open.

She walked through the door, and was greeted by Amy holding the passports.

"Here's the passports," she said, handing the blue documents over to Lt. Iyer.

Iyer took a brief look at them, then nodded her approval of their authenticity. The tourist visas were there, along with the signature from a consulate official in Houston, Texas. "I'm just going to take a look around."

Amy and Mina looked at each other. "That would be fine," Amy said, concealing her nervousness.

Lt. Iyer took a look around the flat. It was large one, compared to Indian standards, with two bedrooms, a shower and WC, a kitchen and a common area with a balcony.

"This is a nice place that your friend has lent you," Iyer asked suspiciously.

"Yeah, she's loaded," Mina replied, trying to parry Iyer's questions. Amy reached in her purse, ostensibly to check her phone but to reach for one of the pistols that she had concealed in her cleanup of the room.

"What does this 'friend' do?" Iyer pried, taking a quick look at one of the bedrooms. It was kind of messy in there, like Mina had alluded to in her previous conversation.

"She's uh…she's an accountant."

"For which company?"

"The…uh…"

"The Nakanishi Group," Amy butted in, trying to deflect Iyer's train of thought. "Look, we don't know what she does, we just asked if we could crash here for a couple of weeks while we take a break from school."

"And what school do you attend in the United States?"

Mina was sweating now; Iyer was asking a lot of questions that she didn't know the answers to and she didn't know how long she could take her questioning much longer…

"Oh god, I have to hurl." Mina went running toward the bathroom, regretting that she had brushed her teeth that morning with the polluted Indian water. She ran past Iyer, almost knocking her over in the process and barely making it to the western style toilet to throw up into it.

"Blehhhgggggg."

"Ah…I think I've seen all there needs to be seen," Iyer said, trying not to laugh at Mina's misfortune. It was a common sight in India to see foreigners (especially Westerners), get sick and suffer some sort of discomfort during their stay in India. "Thank you for your cooperation."

"You're welcome," Amy replied, also trying not to laugh. "I'm sorry about my friend over there."

"Don't mention it." Iyer left, dialing her boss back at HQ to tell here that everything was fine on her end and that she would be back shortly.

"Blehhhggggg."

"Are you okay in there Mina?" Amy yelled to her.

"I'm just fucking peachy!" Mina yelled back, then went back to throwing up in the toilet.

"Alright then," Amy said. "I'd better contact Artemis, make sure to tell him that everything is alright."

She went over to the balcony and pulled out a laptop computer that she had been hiding from Iyer and turned it on.

"Let's see if I can piggyback off of that KH-13 satellite he keeps going on about."

Within a minute, she had established a secure connection between her and Artemis, who had been panicking for the last couple of hours or so.

"Where the fuck were you!" he hissed to Amy. He was still sitting by his desk, looking around for Luna or Col. Iwasaki for help. "I was about to get Iwasaki to send a rescue team for you!"

"That would have gone down well," Amy replied, imagining a heavily armed and dangerous special operations team blazing a path of destruction through Bangalore. Oh wait…

"Yeah, but you called just in time. What the hell happened out there?"

"We just had some technical difficulties," Amy blatantly lied.

"I haven't heard that one before," Artemis said. He looked around again, for anybody in the hanger he was stationed in. Luna was at her work station and Col. Iwasaki had stepped out for a moment.

"Look, just tell me what's going on and I won't tell anyone," he pleaded.

Amy sighed. "It's really complicated," she said.

Mina continued to throw up in the background.

"What was that?"

"Mina is having some stomach problems right now," Amy said.

"Fuck you Amy!" she yelled, before blowing more chunks.

"Oh…that's not good."

"Look, I'll tell you when we get back what's going on. Bring Luna as well," Amy said, tapping her fingers on the keyboard.

"What about the others in the SAILOR team?" Artemis asked.

Amy had to think on that one for a second before she made her decision. "Not now…we'll have to tell this later to them."

"Okay. Have a good flight home. We'll have the debriefing in the usual place."

"Understood."

Amy disconnected the connection to Artemis, and continued to listen to Mina throw up in the bathroom. She listened to the sounds of the city, the auto rickshaws purring in the streets, cars and SUVs honking their horns at each other, and the general hustle and bustle of eight million people go about their usual business.

How simple life felt at the moment to Amy. There was no international conspiracies, large corporations to deal with, snipers at every turn, shadowy operatives waiting to pounce, just life as usual. How she wished for her old life back at the moment.


	28. Chapter XXVI: Presents, accounted for

**Chapter XXVI: Presents, accounted for.**

**1310hrs, 11 November 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan**

_"While wrapped gifts are not prohibited, if a bag alarms our security officers may have to unwrap a gift to take a close look inside. We recommend passengers wrap gifts after their flight or ship them ahead of time, to avoid the possibility of having to open them during the screening process." Transportation Security Administration Website "Traveling with Food or Gifts."_

* * *

"What the hell is in this box-thingy?" Artemis asked, poking at it with his pen.

"Hey, I'm just glad that I got it past security," Amy said. They were back in that conference room, waiting for Luna and Mina to show up. Lita, Raye and Serena were still on assignment, and Iwasaki had seen it fit to bring Amy and Mina back for a bit more rest and relaxation.

"How's the rest of the team doing?" Amy asked Artemis.

"Luna is having trouble getting Raye and Serena to stop arguing," he replied, still examining the box. He picked it up; it only seemed to weigh less than a 100 grams, despite the material it was made out of. "But that's about it. They're stalking some target up in North China or something like that."

"Hmm." Amy picked up the box and shook it. Nothing.

"I don't know what to make of this thing," she told him.

"Can you take it down to the lab?" Artemis asked her.

"I don't know what they're doing down there, but the basement is closed off for now." Mina entered the room with Luna.

"Did you scan it with your HUD eyepiece?" Luna asked Amy.

"I already did so, and it just came back with some junk data," she replied, poking at the tablet computer that had all of her information from the scan on it. "It's emanating a signal, but I can't pin down what it is."

"Why are you using this tablet?" Luna asked confusedly. She picked it up (it was an Acer A500), and examined it briefly before giving it back to Amy. "This is last year's model."

"That's all they had," Amy said. "And I didn't want an iPad."

"Nobody wants an iPad," Artemis chipped in. He was wrong, of course.

"I beg to differ, but I wanted to put Linux on mine," Amy stated. "This was the one that I cracked."

"That's why this is different," Luna said, noting that she had customized the kernel of an Ubuntu OS to run for a tablet computer.

"It makes things a lot easier."

"Hey, you could have been using Windows," Artemis pointed out.

"And this team would have fallen apart extremely fast," replied Amy. "Not that we needed that operating system to make this team go bonkers."

"That's true," Luna said, looking at her own computer at the live data feed that was coming in from the SAILOR team in the field. "I've been trying to get Lita, Raye and Serena to get on this target, but they aren't listening very well."

"What's wrong with them?"

"I don't know. Just like everything else in this program," she replied. "Anyway, so you don't know what this box is?"

"Nope," Mina said. "It weighs a little bit under 100grams, is completely rectangular…"

"And it doesn't have anything in it?"

"X-Rays show nothing, my scans show nothing," Amy replied. "And I've dropped it several times, hit it with a hammer, held it to an open flame, everything."

"Where did you do that if the lab's closed?" Artemis asked, confused.

Amy blushed in embarrassment. "Oh…in my room."

"That's why the fire alarm went off earlier today," Mina said. "Nice one."

"You're welcome."

"Huh…" Luna looked at the box, holding it up to the light. "Where did you get this again?"

"Ah…yeah…that's a good question," Amy replied, trying to think of something to say. "We…we got it from a source!"

Mina looked at Amy. Nice one, the expression on her face said in annoyance.

"What source would that be?" Luna asked suspiciously. "Artemis, do you know of any sources in India?"

"Not that I know of." He was still trying to play dumb as well, but he was curious about everything that had gone down in India.

"Look, we got it from some guy okay?"

"Did you talk to that Sudhir Reddy person?" Luna interrogated, putting down the box and staring at Amy. She felt the room drop a couple of degrees.

"Ah…"

"You did, didn't you?" Luna's eyes narrowed. She did not like where this was heading. Luna cast a look at Artemis; he knew more than she did, but she wasn't going to tear into him…yet.

"Well…" Mina said.

Luna sighed. "I'm going to have to report this to Colonel Iwasaki," she said in an exasperated tone. "I can't have you and the other SAILOR team deviating from mission objectives. I have enough trouble as it is with those three." She started to walk toward the door.

"No wait, look, we have a reason," Mina protested, jumping in front of the door of the conference room.

"What is it?" Luna said in a dull voice.

"We thought…uh…we thought…" The normally suave Mina was out of things to say. "Look, some things weren't adding up, okay?"

"Like…?"

"That Sudhir person didn't have anything to do with terrorism," Amy butted in, giving some breathing room for Mina.

"We asked him for…"

"Oh great," Luna interrupted. "You just threw out all your training and approached a target, asking him for information."

"As I was saying," Amy continued, glaring at her comm officer. "We approached him for information because his file was not adding up to what we were seeing in the field."

"And what did you find?" Luna asked.

"We found that his boss, Dilap Desai or D.D…"

"So that's why you asked me to do a background check on that Dilep Desai person," Artemis said, finally putting the puzzle pieces together.

"Yeah, that's why," Amy said, wondering how the hell Artemis made it through officer candidate school. "He was in contact with some militant groups as a youth, and a Chinese spy, Hao Zhong…"

"Who?" Luna asked.

"Hao."  
"What?" Luna was egging them on now.

"Okay, enough with that!" Amy snapped. "You might know him, he's the man Kim Yejun was in contact with here when he blew us all up."

"I've heard of him, yes." Luna walked around the room now, arms crossed against her military uniform. "He went missing some time ago, if I recall correctly."

Amy shook her head at that statement. "Hao Zhong…despite what's been said, is alive and in Hong Kong, waiting for D.D to deliver this box to him."

"And how do you know that this D.D person was supposed to deliver this package?" Luna pressed.

"Ah. We went and talked to him."

"Goddammit!" Luna snapped at Amy. "For crying out loud, you're supposed to be the smart one!"

"Yeah, about that…" Amy blushed a little bit, but tried to maintain her composure at the _deteriorating_ conversation.

"Luna, it's not her fault, but she did…" Artemis spoke up, but trailed off when Luna turned her attention to him.

"What did you do?" she snapped.

"I helped to find D.D's location, and get Amy and Mina out a sticky situation…"

"Would this 'sticky situation' happen to involve fireworks?" Luna asked, sarcastically. Even that news report had reached Japan, on the "wacky news" segment.

"More like, a very heavily armed paramilitary unit," Artemis replied, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.

"What the hell is wrong with all of you?!" Luna exclaimed, edging closer to general insanity.

"We had to pursue this lead," Mina protested. "Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to get to the bottom of all this."

"And what is 'the bottom of all this'?" Luna said.

"There's something wrong here, with this team, with the missions we go on, with the people we target, with the equipment we use, everything," Amy replied. "I believe the Nakanishi Group is manipulating us, and we're being played as fools."

Luna stared at the two them for a while, pondering the (inane) information that she had received.

"Look, I'm still kind of skeptical of this entire thing," Luna said, even after all the evidence that Amy and Mina had given them.

"Let's get this straight," Artemis added. "A large multinational company is pulling the strings from behind the scenes and we're all being used in a big international puppet show." Despite Luna's misgivings though, he felt that there had been something going on in the shadows as well. "It sounds implausible, but I guess it could work."

"I wouldn't put it like that, but…" Amy started to say more, but Luna cut her off.

"I still have my doubts about this entire situation," she replied.

"Think about it, Luna," Artemis said. "We get all these assignments, targeting supposedly corrupt CEOs, corporations and stuff, and we go in, disrupt operations and shift the blame to third party actors. Nobody likes bankers, CEOs, stockbrokers and all those finance people nowadays but when we do our operations, a power vacuum opens up."

"And guess which actor comes in and fills the vacuum?" Amy asked rhetorically.

"The Nakanishi Group," Luna sighed, throwing up her hands in resignation. "I get it. But do you have any proof that the Nakanishi Group is up to all of this?"

"Um…"

"Besides this box?" Amy said. "I have some emails..."

"That you got from Dr. Kawasaki," Luna interrupted. "I know about that."

"Sorry." Amy made a note to cover her tracks more carefully next time.

"Look," Luna said. "We still have several missions to do. This has my interest, but I am not going to come to any conclusions over this situation unless you have some serious proof."

"What about the meeting in Hong Kong that D.D was supposed to have?" Mina asked of her.

"I don't want to know any more of this," Luna said. "If you want to investigate further, you do so. But I'm going to stay out of it." She looked at Artemis. "You do so, as well."

With that, she left, taking Artemis out of the room. He gave an "I'm sorry" look and disappeared behind the doors.

"That went well," Mina griped to Amy. "Now what?"

"I hope that they don't tell the other people in the program," Amy said, accessing some more data on her tablet computer. "All we can do now is wait for an excuse to get out of this place and meet Zhong…Chung…that guy in Hong Kong."

* * *

Amy went back into her room after a couple of hours, extremely frustrated at today's events. This stupid, goddamned box was giving her headaches. She looked at it, on her desk. It taunted her, screaming to reveal its secrets. Open me! If you can, it seemed to say.

Amy tried one last desperate attempt to open the thing before going to bed. She slammed it on her desk. Nothing. Again. Nothing. She hit it harder and harder, venting whatever anger and frustration she had accumulated over the last couple of months.

One of the sections suddenly came off. Amy looked at it in surprise, not actually thinking that brute-forcing this thing was actually going to work. Looking at the box more carefully, she saw that she could pop a flat section of it off, and reveal what was inside it.

Amy did so, and a keycard was taped to the inside. It was one of those cards with the microchip in it that you scanned or put in a reader to allow access.

"Well…" Amy said out loud. "That was certainly a new development." She had to call Luna about this.

Five minutes later, a very sleepy eyed Luna was standing outside her door after repeated phone calls to her room.

"Luna, look, look at this." Amy gestured inside.

Luna was not very happy about being woken up, especially after spending hours arguing with Colonel Iwasaki, the other SAILOR team members, and now the supposed smart one of the team was going nuts as well.

"What is it?" she replied, groggily.

"It's the box! I got it to open."

That got her attention. Luna quickly wiped away the sleep from her eyes and walked over to Amy's desk. She picked up the metal box and examined it.

"Looks like you hit a weak spot on the corner there," Luna noted. "I guess that's what did it in."

She put the box down and picked up the keycard. "It looks like the ones we carry around all the time at the base." She had hers' on a lanyard, with military training stressing that they needed to carry those ID cards around at all times.

"Dunno how that's going to help you now though. Perhaps that Zhong…Chung…guy will elaborate further."

"I hope so."

Luna stared some more at the keycards before excusing herself. "Well, I've got a long day tomorrow, and I need to get some sleep. Thanks for letting me know though. It's certainly a good development." She still wasn't convinced of the situation that Amy was proposing. An international conspiracy? Right. For all she knew, those keycards meant nothing, and Amy was on a government sponsored ego trip.

"You're welcome." Luna left the room, leaving Amy to go bed, finally satisfied that they were going somewhere. She got back into bed, and was fast asleep in minutes, happy that something was making sense (for her) all of a sudden.


	29. Chapter XXVII:Prime Minister's Questions

**Chapter XXVII: Prime Minister's Questions.**

**1600hrs, 18 November 2013, 10 Downing Street, London, United Kingdom.**

_"Well Minister, if you ask me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, as far as we can see, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of departments, then in the final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn't very much in it one way or the other. As far as one can see, at this stage." Sir Humphrey, Yes Minister._

* * *

"And that's it for today, are there any questions from the cabinet?"

Prime Minister Michael Robinson (PC, KBE, BSc (LSE) (Conservative-Witney)), was finishing one of the routine meetings that were held in the Cabinet Room, Number 10, Downing Street, where the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland lived during his (or in Margaret Thatcher's case, her) term.

"Jim, you have a question?"

"Ah, yes Prime Minister," said Sir Jim Hacker, the head of the Department of Administrative Affairs. "I was wondering about the Euro sausage issue."

"Yes, of course…" Robinson was embarrassed constantly by that inane issue over the naming of sausage that came out of Britain. It wasn't that it was bad, just that EU regulations stated that the product coming out of the UK could not be classified as "sausage", like bratwurst or kielbasa. "Look, Jim, you can take care of it. I don't care what you have to do, yell at Brussels for all I care, but just get it resolved."

"Of course."

"Anything else? No? Fine."

He stood up to leave, with everyone else up in the room. The benefits of being the head honcho of one of the most powerful nations in the world…

"Well, that meeting went very well," he said to his Cabinet Secretary, Sir Robert Baiden (GCMG, KBE, MVO). "Do I have anything else scheduled for today?" Usually, the PM would have his private secretary take care of that work, but for this week, Sir Robert was taking up some of the slack as the private secretary had not arrived yet. It was a jarring scene; one of the most powerful men in the civil service playing babysitter to the PM. But hey, the civil service had to keep tabs on the elected officials, and no better way than this.

"Ah, let me see." Sir Robert fumbled around with his tablet computer (he was still getting used to all this technology stuff) and brought up the remaining events for the day. "One last thing. You have the Chief Operating Officer from Nakanishi Group, Europe to come by and talk to you about business in this end of the world."

"Christ almighty, these guys," PM Robinson moaned. "Haven't really dealt with them since the election…"

His shoes clacked on the marble flooring before it turned to carpet, going up to the study.

The PMs before him, like Harold Wilson and Maggie had conducted business in here, as well as Gordon Brown, and had read those "red boxes" full of important information and briefings detailing the situation around the world. Mostly now though, the current PM liked to hold private meetings in there and use it to catch a few hours of shuteye between marathon sessions of running the country.

Robinson would have liked to have a nap now, but the business of running a nation called, specifically Zoisite, the Chief Operating Officer for Nakanishi Group, Europe.

"Mr. Zoisite, please, have a seat," the Robinson said, waving him off as he stood to greet the PM. He still couldn't believe that someone would have a name like Zoisite, after that gemstone. Maybe it wasn't his real name, but he could have picked something less weird, like James Bond or something to that extent.

The two men had a seat by the fireplace, a picture of Margaret Thatcher lording over them like she used to back in the 1980s. Red books lined the walls in their proper bookshelves, like "Who's who, 1981" and several works by Livy. The chandler, Robinson noted, had some lights out. He would have to get some people to fix that some point…and anyway, didn't they switch over to those compact fluorescent lights some time ago?

"Would you care for some tea?" Always the Englishman, tea was practically required as an icebreaker, whether it was accepted or not. "I understand that the Japanese take it differently than us here in the UK."  
"Well, I have grown accustomed to your sort of tea," Zoisite replied. "I also enjoy your clotted cream and scones as well."

"Do you want some?" The PM was kind of hungry…

"Uh…sure. I'll take some."

"Excellent." The wife wouldn't like it, but then again, he was the goddamn PM. He could have some scones if he fucking wanted to.

Robinson stood up and walked to one of the doors leading to an adjacent room. A member of the Diplomatic Protection Group stood guard, MP5 in hand, along with Sir Robert, shuffling papers and other documents.

"Sir Robert," the PM said.

"Yes, Prime Minister?" Robert didn't even look up from his paperwork, so engrossed he was in his tasks.

"Can you get someone to send in some cream tea?"

"Right away."  
The PM nodded his head in thanks, and disappeared back into the study.

"So, what can I do for you, Mr. Zoisite? I'm sure that this is not a social call."

"You are correct in that line of thinking," he replied with a smile.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in," the PM said. The door opened, and a maid came in with the cream tea on a tray.

"Thanks." The maid put the tea and scones on the table near the center of the room and promptly left.

"Help yourself," the PM gestured toward the tray.

"Thank you," Zoisite said, getting up from the seat near the fireplace and making his way toward the table. "Like I was saying, I am here because there has been some holdup of my business operations. Specifically, it has to do with the Home Office."

"The Home Office?" the PM asked, scribbling down notes on a notepad before reaching for a scone. "I'm not quite sure what I can do about Sir Albert, he's really tough now with our new security protocols."

Zoisite took a bite of the scone, which had a generous helping of clotted cream on it. He relished the taste in his mouth before speaking his mind. "It has to do with our shipping businesses."

"Shipping?" The PM was a little confused by that statement. He took a bite of the scone with clotted cream on it. "I thought Nakanishi was only involved in Tech and Banking."

"You are correct, but in the last couple of years, we're trying to expand our operations. Shipping is one, food is another."

"Food?" Robinson looked down at his scone, wondering if that was why the catering had changed all of a sudden here.

"Indeed. Combined with the Shipping Industry, we can have a whole new market open to us, along with our security contractors."  
"Wait a second, slow down." The PM stopped taking notes for a second and sat back in his chair at the table, taking a sip of tea. "How much has Nakanishi expanded in the last year? This has all changed since the election."

"Understandably so," Zoisite replied, getting out his iPad. He swiped it open, then accessed a list of stats and figures. He handed it over the PM.

Robinson took a look at all of the information handed him. "What the…heavy industry in Korea? Agro-business in America? Security Contractors? You certainly have been quite busy since I last saw you."

"Indeed. And I know that I asked you for a favor back in the election, when your poll numbers were sagging a bit."

The PM sighed a little bit. He knew that this was going to come back and bite him in the ass, but in the competitive world of politics, you had to pick your poison carefully. At least Witney, his home constituency, had gotten a huge windfall in terms of investment from the Nakanishi Group.

"Alright, what exactly do you need?"

"The Home Office has been stalling for some time, the entry of our containers to the United Kingdom, stating that they pose a risk of a terrorist attack."

The PM almost spit out his tea on that one. "What?!" he said in disbelief. "As opposed to the other couple of thousands of containers that come into the country every day? That's incredibly stupid."

"Indeed, Prime Minister. The Home Office wants every container with the Nakanishi logo stopped and inspected because of that reason." Zoisite was calmly sipping his tea, as if in a conversation with an old friend, rather than the leader of the UK.

"I can't understand why they would want to do that." The PM was now writing down notes to himself on how to deal with the situation, what he would say to the Minister of the Home Office. "I just was in a meeting with all of them, and Sir Albert did not even mention that when he brought up issues affecting his department."

"Perhaps he has a grudge against my company," Zoisite suggested.

"I highly doubt that," the PM replied, still writing down notes. "He's not the sort that would hold a grudge. Have you tried to speak with the Home Office?"

"I have, personally, and I have gotten nowhere in talking with Sir Albert or any other people in the department."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the PM said.

"Be that as it may," Zoisite continued, "The Home Office has some sort of issue against my company, and I wish it to stop immediately."

"I will look into this right away," the PM replied. "I am sorry that you have experienced difficulties in doing business in our country."

"It's just the way things are," Zoisite said. "Thank you for your help."

He stood up to leave, as did the PM. "My pleasure," he replied, shaking Zoisite's hand. It was icy cold, even though moments before, he had been holding a hot cup of tea.

"Prime Minister." Zoisite left the room, watched very carefully by several of the guards.

"Sir Robert," the PM said after Zoisite had gone. "Please contact Sir Albert and tell him I wish to see him at once."

"Prime Minister," Sir Robert replied. "Sir Albert has left for his residence and won't be back until tomorrow."

"Then get him on his mobile then," the PM insisted. "This is very urgent."

"Right away," Sir Robert said stoically. He dialed the number on the office phone for Sir Albert's government issued mobile, and within a minute he had picked up the phone.

"Yes, this is Sir Robert, the PM wishes to have a word with you." Sir Robert handed the phone over to the PM.

"Hello, Alfie? I just need a moment to clear up an issue with you."

Sir Alfred Russell was sitting in the back of his chauffeured car, looking very annoyed that the end of his very long day was going to be pushed back that much further.

"What would that be?" he replied. "I told you, there was nothing I could do about the drugs issue in Liverpool, we can't stop them if we get more funding, to which you've actually cut the budget of the police force there!"

"It doesn't have to do with the drugs trade," the PM replied, giving an equally annoyed look to his cabinet secretary, who was listening in on the other line.

"Then what is it then?"

"I've just had a word with the COO of the Nakanishi Group and…"

"Now stop right there," Alfie said, cutting the PM off. "That's none of your business."

"Why didn't you mention the problems between Nakanishi and the Home Office during the meeting today?!" Robinson shot back. "Alfie, I need to know about these problems or else I get very angry people clogging up my schedule, and I already have to deal with plenty of those every day."

"You have a conflict of interest with the Nakanishi Group, and too long have I seen the undue influence of that infernal company take hold over this nation," Sir Albert replied vehemently.

"I beg to differ," the PM replied. "This is the first time in three years that someone from that company has talked to me."

"And that's my point!" the Home Secretary replied. "You should have never accepted help from them in the first place."

"I didn't have much choice back then," the PM somberly said. "I needed the votes."

The Home Secretary scoffed at that comment. "Really now? You would have secured a win if you had just formed a coalition with…"

"That's enough about my election," the PM said, his voice become louder and louder. The guards in the room looked uncomfortably at each other; it was going to be one of those conversations.

"Fine. The reason why I had the Nakanishi Group's shipments halted and inspected is because I feel like they are being used to smuggle in equipment for terrorist groups here in the United Kingdom."

"And what proof do you have of that…?" the PM asked, extremely skeptical of the Home Office Minster.

"Look," Sir Albert replied. The car was now stopped in the infamous traffic jams that London was known for. And the no car zones, coupled with the congestion fee…well, let's say some routes that people took made life difficult for those who lived on those specific roads. "I had the officer in charge of the Counter Terrorism Command, Stuart Nelson, from the Met that told me that weapons shipments were being loaded into Nakanishi containers and that they had found evidence of these weapon-loaded containers in several gun crimes in Central and East London. There also may be stockpiles of weapons located throughout London in these containers after they have been delivered to their locations, mostly construction sites."

"Do they have the guns? Or these supposed containers at all?" The PM was not going to let mere speculation stop business as usual.

"Ah…well…" the Home Secretary hesitated. "I have my suspicions but…"

"Sir Albert," the PM said, wanting to put an end to this conversation. "Do you have a reason at all for preventing Nakanishi's shipments in this country, stopping valuable trade and commerce, or are you just being daft?"

"Prime Minister," the Home Secretary replied. "I have the authority under the Terrorism act of 2006 to at least act upon suspicious organizations that might be aiding and abetting terrorist activities."

"And so, the Nakanishi Group is going to risk all of its international business reputation helping terrorists run weapons into the UK? Tell me how that makes any sense at all, Home Secretary."

The Home Secretary finally gave up. The car lurched forward for a second, keeping in line with the traffic. "Alright Prime Minister, you win. I'll release the hold on the Nakanishi containers, but I will be keeping close tabs on all their activity."

"You do that," Robinson replied. He hung up the phone, glad that situation was over with. He dialed the number for the Nakanishi Group European office in Bishopgate Tower. He didn't have Zoisite's mobile, but he did have his office phone number.

"Chief Operating Officer's office, this Shilpa speaking," a CSR person answered.

"Uh, yeah, I have a message for Mr. Zoisite," the PM said. "Tell him that his problem with the Home Office has been resolved and that he can continue business as usual."

"Of course. Who is this message from?"

"The Prime Minister," Robinson said, without a hint of irony.

"Oh…of course Prime Minister," was the surprised response. "Thank you for your call."

"You're welcome."

With that, he ended the call.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Sir Robert told him after he hung up.

"So you have secrets now too?" the PM joked with the Cabinet Secretary.

"We all have skeletons," he said very seriously in response.

The PM stopped fooling around and looked at him.

"I suppose you would know, seeing all the politicians you've worked with over the years here in Number 10."

"Indeed," he replied, shuffling the last of the paperwork on his desk.

"What's your take on this Nakanishi Group then?"

"Are you sure you want my opinion?"

"Yes."

Sir Robert sighed, putting his briefcase on the desk, along with his tablet computer.

"I don't trust the Nakanishi Group on bit here, especially in here in Europe."

"Is it because they're Japanese? Or…?"

"Not at all; we do business with plenty of foreign companies, American, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Korean, the whole lot of them. The problem is that their expansion has come in a time when the Japanese economy as a whole, is doing incredibly bad. Expansion of their operations has grown massively, from just technology and banking to food, transportation, shipping, you name it, they're into it nowadays. And I don't think anyone realizes the rate of expansion; not even the Americans. I heard that the Nakanishi Group has a huge voice in the American government, squashing out even the largest corporations there."

"So you have a problem with big corporations then?"

"Again, I do not. My problem with Nakanishi is that they're acting completely off-base than everyone else on the global market. From my perspective, at least, a non-state entity is in control of international trade rather than the government, and the government seems to be subservient to the whims of that corporation. Perhaps a form a reverse mercantilism, but I doubt that."

"Uh…" The PM was somewhat confused by his Cabinet Secretary's comments on economic theory, even though he did go to the LSE (and got a third class honor). "Look, I don't think it works that way. Are you trying to say that the Nakanishi Group is basically practicing its very own form of Neocolonialism?"

"Please," Sir Robert said. "I'm not trying to be that complicated, and colonialism has nothing to do with this. All I'm trying to say is watch your back when it comes to them."

"Did you have to drag it out that long?" The PM said, exasperated by the long-winded explanations that he gave out when he was trying to justify one of his statements. Probably a side effect of going to Oxford (Balliol College).

"Certainly Prime Minister," he replied, standing up from his desk and preparing to leave for the day. "Now excuse me, I have a meeting with all of the other Permanent Secretaries for dinner and I don't want to keep them waiting. If you would kindly excuse me; you know how to get in touch if you need anything."

He left the room, leaving the PM scratching his head at all the "advice" he was getting nowadays. Both the Home Secretary and his Cabinet Secretary were being extremely secretive, Nakanishi had suddenly taken interest in him, and of course, with the elections coming up next year, the pressure was on him to improve the economy more…

The PM sighed and exited the study, going back to his office for another long night of paperwork and phone calls to leaders around the world.


	30. Chapter XXVIII: Combat Fatigue

**Chapter XXVIII: Combat Fatigue.**

**1300hrs, 19 November 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan**

_"When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success…" John Locke._

_"I'm tired, Colonel. I've had all of this army and all of these officers…all of them, the whole bloody lousy rotten mess of sick-brained, pot-bellied scabheads that ain't fit to lead a johnny detail, ain't fit to pour pee out of a boot with instructions on the heel." Private Joseph Bucklin, Gettysburg._

* * *

"God fucking dammit!" Col. Iwasaki screamed at Serena, Raye and Lita in his office on the third floor of the medical complex. "What the fuck happened out there?!"

"He got away, sir," Serena said back. "There was nothing we could do about it!"

"Like hell! You have the best training, the best equipment and the best resources bar the US Special Operations forces and you let some NOBODY get away from you?" Iwasaki snapped.

"That 'nobody,'" Raye objected, "Ran right into an entire battalion of PRC Soldiers and we didn't want to spark another international incident!"

"That doesn't matter! Orders were to kill the man, and two weeks' time, you couldn't even do that." Iwasaki was livid; he was beyond mad at these girls at their inability to complete some petty job that the PM wanted done. How was he going to explain this to his superiors?

"Sir, our operations have compromised security throughout East Asia, and even though most of them have been classified as accidents, security has been tightened especially in the PRC," Lita protested, crossing her arms over each other.

"Stand at attention, like you've been trained," Iwasaki ordered. He was obviously not in a good mood, and more insubordination from these girls would be the end of him.

"Make me, fuckwad." The response from Lita was a nasty one.

"What did you say?" Iwasaki said, his voice growling in frustration. He knew exactly what Lita had said, but he had to make her bend to his will…or at least try.

"I said, make me, you fucking prick," Lita snarled. She was also not in a good mood to be talked to like that, and she didn't really care what the consequences were.

Iwasaki took a deep breath, trying to hold in his anger. If he snapped, Lita would send him flying across the room into his prized cherry oak bookshelf, piled high with classic Japanese literature and treaties.

"That's all for now," he said, gritting his teeth together. Next week, the dentist would tell him that he needed to cut that out because it was going to severely affect the enamel on the front row of teeth. "You three are confined to quarters until we can get this all settled out. Get the fuck out of here." Of course, the girls wouldn't just stay in their rooms, but it was all he could do to assure himself that he was in control.

"With pleasure," Serena snapped back. She and the other three girls left the room in a huff, with Lita slamming the door extra hard as she left, rattling all the picture frames in Iwasaki's office.

"I can't believe the gall of that man," Serena said, walking down the hall to her room. "Why are we doing this again?"

"We don't have much of a choice," Raye replied dryly.

"Oh, thanks for reminding me," Lita said, rather sarcastically. "I'll be in my room."

"Have fun cleaning!" Raye said, returning Lita's sarcasm.

"Yeah, whatever."

Lita ran off to her room, trying not to be mad at everyone at the moment. It had only been an hour since they had gotten back from their failed mission in China, and they were already in deep shit. She hadn't felt this way since…well, since she had gotten word from her grandparents on that day.

* * *

The phone was ringing in the apartment. Moving quickly, Lita ran to get the phone; the only person who ever used that phone line was her grandparents, too stubborn to get a mobile.

"Lita…"

"Hey grandma, what's going on?"

She had just gotten back from school, in the last year of junior high. She was still a rabble rouser, and got into trouble sometimes, but it wasn't all that bad. Her boyfriend had been going steady now for a couple of months, and everything seemed to be a-okay.

"It's your parents."

"Yeah, they're going to be flying in today from their vacation in Hong Kong."

"Um…" Her grandmother's voice trailed off. "Lita, I don't know how else I can put this, but your parents…they…"

Lita didn't even hear her grandmother finish her sentence. She didn't want to believe what she was telling her. There was a television remote nearby, and grabbing it, she turned on the TV in her apartment kitchen.

"A JAL 747 flying from Hong Kong to Tokyo went down over the Taiwanese Strait today, killing all five-hundred passengers and crew. The Japanese government, along with the Taiwanese government has blamed the PRC in shooting down the airliner, increasing tensions in the region. The Prime Minister stated that…"

She cried for days after that. The police and some reps from JAL came by and told her what she already knew, and she had to move out of the apartment and live with her grandparents for a little bit. But she couldn't live with them…she didn't want to be dependent on anyone anymore.

Lita moved back into the apartment, still a minor but managed to pay the rent with the settlement money that JAL had given out to all of the surviving relatives and family members, plus the life insurance that her father had taken out. She was set for a very long time, but it didn't matter. All she wanted was her family back. Lita fought at her new high school with anyone, everyone; teachers, bullies, the class rep, even the principal himself had been a victim of Lita's haymaker before being kicked out and going to Azabu Jūban. And there she met Amy and Serena, along with their friends Mina and Raye…

* * *

"Goddammit Lita, open this door!"

Kobayashi and crew were standing outside the room, knocking on the door.

"How long has she been in there?" Nurse Kuroi asked.

"I don't know, a couple of hours or something like that," Iwasaki said, looking at his watch.

"You did tell them that they were confined to quarters," Kobayashi pointed out.

"I didn't think they'd actually listen," Col. Iwasaki replied. "Those two didn't."  
"Lita, please, it's important." Still no response.

Finally, Kobayashi got the keys to her room out and opened the door.

Lita was lying there on her bed, half-asleep, half-undressed, in tears, and in general, a complete wreck.

"Christ," Kobayashi muttered. "Kuroi, check her out."

Nurse Kuroi moved over to her bed, making sure to be extra careful in approaching her. Lita's strength caused problems if she got angry, but they also didn't want to remove her prosthetics, which was a painful and humiliating process.

"Lita…Lita," she shook her gently.

"Wha…what's going on?"

"We're here for a quick checkup, that's all."

"I don't want to see a doctor," she replied, trying to force her away. "I'm fine."

"Please, we need to do this," Kuroi firmly said.

"Uhhnnn." Lita pushed her away, gently. By gently, she shoved her to the ground.

"Ow!" Kuroi exclaimed, and the rest of the people outside rushed in.

"I…" Lita tried to get up, still dazed and confused.

"That's enough!" Iwasaki said. "You two, prepare to fire!"

There were two orderlies armed with (ironically), tasers. They started to raise them to the firing position but Kobayashi stopped them.

"Hold your fire!" he ordered, much to Iwasaki's dismay. "Lita, listen to me, we're just trying to help."

"And why should I listen to you?!" she yelled back, now standing by the bed and glaring at the people in the room. "It's the same goddamn thing, we're not doing good, we're not performing up to standard, we can't do this, we can't do that, and I'm sick and tired of taking orders from you people in the first place! I didn't even want to be here, I was brought here by some freak accident!"

She shed a few tears, but quickly wiped them away.

"Lita, I can understand how you feel," Kobayashi said. "Please, it's for your own good."

"I don't care!" she shot back.

"I've had enough of this," Iwasaki snarled. "Open fire!"

One of the orderlies fired his taser, but Lita blocked it with her prosthetic arm. The electric current made it all but useless, and it became dead weight on her arm.

"Argg…" she moaned. Seeing that she could either take another taser shot and lay there helpless, or give up, she chose the latter. "Fine. You got me."

"Good to hear," Iwasaki said. "But I'm not taking any chances."

The other orderly fired and paralyzed Lita, leaving her helpless as she was picked up and lifted onto a stretcher. She could hear the doctors arguing with Col. Iwasaki in the background.

"That was completely unnecessary!" she heard Kobayashi argue.

"It was completely necessary!" Iwasaki replied.

Lita saw in passing, Dr. Kawasaki standing by Nurse Kuroi, not really doing anything, just watching. It was completely unnerving.

Several hours later and many pointless medical tests ("Your blood pressure is up again," Dr. Kobayashi pointed out. "But after what's happened, I can't blame you."), Lita was finally released and sent to the cafeteria, where the other members of the SAILOR team were eating dinner.

"You too, huh?" Serena asked her. Typical of her, she had some doughnuts on her plate, next to the tonkatsu sandwich and fries.

"I heard you put up a fight," Raye added, lifting some chopsticks full of udon noodles to her mouth.

"It was nothing," Lita replied, sitting down angrily. "I gave up, but Iwasaki had me tased anyway."

"Don't tase me bro!" Mina joked.

"That was old five years ago," Amy replied.

"Sorry," Mina said, glaring at Amy. "Aren't you going to eat anything, Lita?"

"I don't feel hungry," she lied. Her stomach said otherwise, giving a huge growl in response.

"I think that means, yes," Mina said. "Come on, I'll take you to the line and we can get some food together."

"No, I'll do it," Raye said, getting up from her spot.

"Hey, wait for me!" Serena protested, also standing up.

"Fine, I'll come as well," Amy groaned. Stupid social conventions.

Everyone got more food anyway. Lita grabbed some curry and rice, along with some tonkatsu.

"Itadakimasu," she muttered, clapping her hands together.

"Itadakimasu!" was the vocal response from the rest of the team.

"So, what exactly did they do to you in there?" Serena asked Lita. "They just kept us in there for a couple of minutes, and then let us go."

"They had to look at my prosthetics," Lita said, eating some of her curry.

"Uh, I don't buy that," Serena replied. "Case in point." She pointed to her legs.

"You didn't get tased," Lita said back. "I'm not quite sure what they did, because it was a lot of waiting, then everyone, I mean, everyone took a look at me. Kobayashi, Kawasaki, Nurse Kuroi, hell, Iwasaki was in there for a second just to look at my arm."

"Iwasaki was in the exam room with you?" Mina scrunched up her face at that. "Ew."

"Tell me about it. And if he asked me to give him head or something like that," Lita said, trying not to laugh at her ridiculous statement, "It wouldn't have ended well."

"This isn't ero," Raye replied, waving her fork around. There was a piece of cheesecake on her cafeteria tray now.

"Says the person who watches all that stuff on the internet," Lita retorted.

"Oh knock it off," Raye groaned. "I've amended my ways."

"So you only use the incognito mode now on your browser," Amy said.

"Yeah, I only…hey!" Raye glared at Amy. "Cut that shit out!"

"Sorry, it was only a glance," she smiled softly.

"So you look at that stuff now too, don't you?" Raye said, trying to turn the conversation on her.

"Nah, just me watching you watching that ero stuff," Amy replied, digging into her dessert, a piece of chocolate cake.

"Oh I swear someday…" Raye said, clutching the fork in her hand.

"Sorry to interrupt you dinner girls." Kuroi had suddenly appeared by them.

"How did you that?" Lita asked her.

"Sorry, I came in after you had started talking about ero," she said with a straight face.

"That's great," Serena said, trying not to laugh at Raye's very embarrassed look. "What did you want?"

"Col. Iwasaki wants you in a briefing…"

Everyone at the table groaned.

"Tomorrow at noon."

"Well, that's not too bad," Serena replied. "It could be worse."

"We could be doing more PT drills," Amy said.

"I don't mind PT," Lita noted. "It's kind of fun."

"For you," Amy shot back. "I'm kind of on the weak side here."

"And you still can take a guy down twice your size," Lita said. "That's still respectable."

"Well, some of us can't punch through walls or cars or use alchemy," Raye snarked at her.

"Besides the alchemy part?" Lita said. "Yeah, I can do all those things. Plus, I have the most tal…"

"Thank you Lita," Serena interrupted, stopping her in the middle of her sentence. "We'll be there, Nurse Kuroi."

"Of course." She bowed and left the cafeteria.

"Jesus, this blows," Raye said.

"It could be worse," Serena commented, twirling her hair in boredom.

"Yeah, to you."

"Oh thanks Raye, you always make everything so happy and cheerful around her," Serena said angrily.

"Hold up you two," Lita tried to intervene, but the argument was underway.

"And sometimes, I can't put up with your shit when we're in the field!" Raye retorted.

"Like what?!"

"I don't know, maybe it's the way you're so…"

Mina, Lita, and Amy looked at each other, and quickly excused themselves from the table, leaving the two of them to fight it out.

"What's up with those two?" Mina asked Lita.

"I have no fucking clue," she snipped back. "They did that all throughout our mission, and I had to put up with it."

"Sorry," Mina replied, somewhat hurt by Lita's attitude.

"Yeah, whatever." She stalked off to her room, irritated at everything that had gone on today.

"I'm going to my room too," Mina said.

"Have a good night then, see you at the briefing," Amy replied glumly.

With that, they all dispersed to their own living quarters, no better off today than they had been a couple of hours ago.


	31. Chapter XXIX: Disunity

**Chapter XXIX: Disunity**

**1732hrs, 27 November 2013, Somewhere in Unity State, South Sudan/Sudan Border**

_"It's hard to look back on some parts of human history, because when heard about injustice, we cared, but we didn't know what to do. Too often, we did nothing." Jason Russell, Kony 2012._

_"Throw the rules out the window, odds are you'll go that way too." Max Payne._

* * *

"SAILOR Mercury, come in, over."

"I hear you Artemis, for Christ sake, I can hear you." Amy was still pissed off at the incident in India despite the rest; it could have gone a lot better in their handling of the situation. Here she was, in the field again, having to unlearn urban combat and relearn fighting in the open. At least Artemis and Luna were on board in her skepticism of things that were going on with Nakanishi. They were lucky that the 108th SIDF was still getting its act together and despite their outstanding performance in destroying the terrorists, their investigative techniques left something to be desired.

She and Mina had still not told any one of the meeting that was supposed to be happening within two weeks, and they didn't have to heart to say anything to the other three members. They were so…it was something was going on that nobody could control. Raye and Serena bickered constantly, Lita cleaned her room obsessively, Mina sat in her room and sung stupid J-Pop songs all the time and Amy recited poetry by Matsuo Basho. This obsessive-compulsive behavior was temporarily treated with Adderall and some other nootropics but it was only a temporary fix.

"Target is ahead, located about one kilometer to the north of your position," Mina said over her radio.

"I have the target in sight, standby."

Amy lifted the binoculars to her eyes and peered to see what the target represented; a MP5-PDW lay by her side, just in case. She was wearing some old chocolate chip desert camouflage, like the rest of the team as they were operating in a semi-arid climate; no need to wear that stupid ACU stuff that the US Army had adopted then dropped in favor of Multicam.

The village was nothing special, several thatched huts along with a few concrete buildings, with a small wooden church in the center. This area was somewhat Christian with a nice dose of the local animist religion mixed in; A church here and there was not an uncommon sight. Supposedly, there had been a series of attacks on several Japanese owned pipelines in the area, and maybe the Chinese had something to do about. Of course, just like the SAILOR team, they couldn't be personally responsible so they used proxies, hiring out some local thugs or soldier wannabes to go blow up pipelines through South Sudan that led through the other Sudan, toward the Red Sea.

"See it?" Artemis said over the radio, looking at the satellite feed coming in on his computer. He sniffed a little bit and took a sip of coffee, wondering what the hell was going on with the SAILOR team as of late. They had been snippy, argumentative, forgetful and constantly cut him off on the radio nowadays; a few months ago, that wouldn't have been a problem.

"I see the dammed target, Artemis!" Amy hissed into the radio. "I heard you the first goddamned time, so you don't have to repeat yourself unless needed!"

"Sorry." Artemis gave a look to Luna at her workstation. She just shook her head and went back to micromanaging the other couple of girls, who were making their way slowly to the village.

"I'm running a scan now," Amy announced to the rest of the team. "Standby."

Amy started doing a scan the village ahead of her, combined with the live satellite feed they were getting from that KH-13 "borrowed" from the CIA. The village was hardly significant, made only a point of interest because there "might" be some insurgents camping out there that had been attacking the aforementioned pipelines.

Not today though.

"Whoa!" Amy's HUD lit up with red dots, almost blanketing the entire village with the indication that there were many hostiles there.

"Artemis, are you getting this?" she said excitedly over the radio.

"Yeah, I'm seeing a whole bunch of movement down there from the satellite." Artemis put his coffee cup down and sat up in his chair. Whatever was going on, it was going to be exciting.

"I'm sending it to everyone in the group here." Amy transmitted the information to Mina, who was on a small ridge five hundred meters toward the village and armed with a M24 Sniper Weapon System, chambered for the powerful .338 Lapura Magnum cartridge.

"Shit, that's a lot of targets," SAILOR Venus replied. "I'll keep my weapon on standby."

Lita, Raye, and Serena were double timing it on the main road leading to the unnamed village when Amy sent them the information.

"Oh, this is going to be so much fun," SAILOR Mars said with glee. She would finally get to use the flamethrower in real combat; all of their other missions had to be more discreet but not this one. An M16A4 with a M203 grenade launcher was slung by her side, ready to go when the flamethrower was out of fuel.

SAILOR Jupiter was carrying a M240 7.62mm general purpose machine gun like it was nothing, ready to use it when the time came.

"That's a nice target rich environment," she commented, hefting the machine gun from her shoulder to the ready position. "Glad I brought this."

SAILOR Moon was carrying her compact M4 CQB Receiver, and cursed not bringing something more heavy. At least she had Raye and Lita to pick up the slack. "Thanks for the information, Amy. We are preparing to assault the village in five minutes, standby for contact."

She focused in on the village, and took a deep breath in, inhaling the dust and the soot in the air from some of the burning campfires.

Something wasn't right though.

"SAILOR Mercury, I see women and children in the village," Mina reported. "They have designated as hostile, over."

"Hold on, let me see." Amy lifted the binoculars to her eyes, but there was a lot of dust in the air, reducing her visibility. She coughed, trying to remove some of the dust from her throat.

The desertification of the area had really made an impact, and the normally lush areas of South Sudan were slowly become dry and dusty due to soil erosion, farming, and poor land management.

"All units, I am deploying the UAV." Amy picked up an unpacked a RQ-11 Raven that she had brought along and tossed it into the air, letting the GPS guidance take over. "Receiving video feed now."

The UAV flew over the village recording the inhabitants, looking for anything hostile. Unfortunately, it also set the record for shortest UAV flight ever when a burst of heavy machine gun fire brought it down.

"Oh shit!" This was not turning out very well…at least it was just a UAV.

Amy by this point, had traversed the terrain to Mina's position on the small ridge.

"Glad of you to join me," Mina said when Amy plopped down next to her, winded slightly from the 500 meter run.

"Did you get anything from the video feed?"

"No, there wasn't enough time to get a proper analysis. And the wind is kicking up again. Artemis, are you getting anything?"

"That's a big negative, SAILOR Mercury. Satellite is getting kind of fuzzy on this end, probably interference some solar flares or something like that." That was complete bullshit; the CIA was wondering who the hell was taking up all of their bandwidth and was trying to cut whoever was using their satellite.

"Dammit," Amy said. She looked again through her binoculars; there were women and children in the village, but now she could see some men running about with rifles in hand.

"I don't understand," Amy said confused, trying to refresh her HUD. Everyone still came up as a target. "Why has everyone been designated hostile?"

Several more men came out, this time, lugging an ancient PM M1910 machine gun that had been probably used in the First World War, of all places. The Lee-Enfields that the men carried also were also very old.

"Why…" Mina was also confused by the situation. "Amy, you have to call off the strike by the others. These aren't terrorists; they're just protecting their homes!"

It was too late though.

"This is SAILOR Moon, we are going in! Cover us!" Serena charged forward, flanked by Lita and Raye.

"Wait!" SAILOR Mercury yelled to no avail.

What followed was something out of a nightmare.

SAILOR Moon, SAILOR Jupiter and SAILOR Mars had spread out, covering a one-hundred meter line of fire in front of them. Several of the village militia were now firing their archaic bolt action rifles, the rounds skipping off of the arid ground and zipping past the attacking team. Mina saw several men get the M1910 machine gun into a firing position.

"I'm sorry," she muttered to herself. SAILOR Venus pulled the trigger, sending a .338 round into the gun itself and destroying it. Shrapnel wounded the crew of the gun, who staggered about.

"Venus, kill those bastards!" SAILOR Moon yelled. They had closed to within fifty meters of the village. Raye opened up with her flamethrower, dousing several people with her flames. SAILOR Jupiter had set up her machine gun and had started firing indiscriminately into the village, at all the targets marked on her HUD. The targets that included women and children.

"No…no…" Amy said. "Guys, please, fall back!"

Her calls went unheeded.

SAILOR Venus saw a woman's head turn to a bloody pile of goo due to SAILOR Jupiter's machine gun fire. People were being cut down left and right, and several more were running toward the village church.

"Mina, for fuck's sake, open fire!" SAILOR Moon yelled into her radio. She fired from the hip into a hut, then tossed a grenade in just to be safe.

"I got these guys!" SAILOR Mars shouted with glee. Her flamethrower was torching everything in sight, people, livestock, houses…it was all burning so beautifully.

More and more of the survivors started to run into the church, having been driven away from the other part of the village by the onslaught.

"I have to stop them," Amy said quietly. "Mina, cover me!"  
"There's nothing to cover!" Mina said back. All gunfire had ceased mere seconds after the SAILOR Team had begun their attack; most of the defenders had been killed in a hail of gunfire or engulfed in flames. There was no opposition now.

"Then come with me! Hurry!" SAILOR Mercury and Venus scrambled up from their position and started to run full tilt toward the smoldering ruins of the village.

"Die. Die. Die! Die! DIE! DIE!" SAILOR Mars was completely unstoppable at this point; having become so detached from her other comrades that she was in berserker mode. She was almost at the church now, where the remaining villagers had barricaded themselves inside in a last ditch effort to protect themselves.

For a second there, SAILOR Mars stopped her flamethrower as she looked at the church. It was a simple wooden one, one room for the worshippers and an altar at the front of it. She could hear the screams and the pleading from the people inside there, and for a moment thought of not torching the entire place.

Then she remembered her dad and the years of stupid Catholic school. Going to mass, being yelled at by the strict nuns, having to go to Mother Superior's office more than once, hail Mary, full of grace, hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, rosaries, Nuns are not Mikos for the last goddamn time, no, I don't take mass, please, leave me alone, go away, yeah I'm popular here but I don't like it here, I hate you dad, I hate you dad, I hate you dad, I HATE YOU DAD I HATE YOU DAD I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!

She depressed the trigger and for two seconds, emptying the remaining fuel pack on her back, spraying the entire church with napalm.

The church immediately burst into flame, the dry wood catching on fire and killing everyone inside from either the heat, flame, smoke inhalation, or the church collapsing around them.

"Oh God." Amy and Mina had finished running from their position to catch up to the rest of the SAILOR Team.

"What…what have you done?" Mina said in a hushed tone, watching the church come down. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, mixed in with the foul stench of death from the people killed outside. Bodies littered the village, twisted and contorted, blown apart into pieces, snapped like twigs during a hurricane.

"They were targets!" Mars shot back. "They were the enemy!"

"They weren't the enemy!" Amy screamed, waving her submachine gun that she was carrying around in the air, in complete violation of weapons safety. "I was trying to tell you that, but you guys went in there and blew everything up!"  
"They shot at us!" SAILOR Moon retorted.

"You didn't have to blow up an entire fucking village!" Mina yelled. "We're no better than the people that have been killing each other here for the last decade or so!"

"But they were the enemy!" Mars understood what Amy and Mina were getting at, but she didn't want to believe it. "I saw them!" Tears started to stream down her face. "I saw them…"

"Saw them do what?!" Amy asked her. "What did they do?"

"They…they…" Raye dropped the now empty flamethrower off her back and collapsed on the ground.

"Serena, do something!" Lita pleaded with SAILOR Moon. She had been completely silent during the exchange of words between Amy, Mina and Raye.

"Thanks, illustrious leader for making such a decisive decision!" Amy snarled at her, diverting her rage from Raye to Serena.

"Look," Serena tried to say calmly. "There has to be a reason for this. Why was the entire village marked as a target, Amy?"

Amy glared at her, but could offer no solution. "I don't know. I'll get on the horn with Artemis, Serena, talk to Luna and ask her what the hell is going on."

Artemis was watching the entire thing go down, safe in his hanger/office and was impressed with the efficiency of the SAILOR Team in taking out the targets. He had not been listening to the radio chatter, frustrated with Amy cutting him off all the time, he had temporarily muted the audio channel, telling himself he would turn it back on went the mission was over.

"Nice job out there guys," he said nonchalantly commented after seeing them congregate in the center of the village.

"What the fuck are you talking about?!" Amy yelled into the radio. "We just wiped out a defenseless village full of old men, women and children!"

Artemis sat up in his chair and looked harder at the screen. "I don't understand, SAILOR Mercury."

"Artemis," SAILOR Venus said to him, very calmly. "Did you designate the targets beforehand?"  
"That a negative," he replied. "I just uploaded the coordinates and told where the KH-13 should be looking. The enemy strength was unknown, but assumed to be high, like we said in the briefing."

"Are you absolutely sure?" Amy continued. "Please, because there's not a single insurgent here, I'm looking at the bodies of twenty middle age men here that barely put up a fight before we killed them."

"I…I don't understand," Artemis said. He looked over at Luna. She also had a very confused look on her face.

"SAILOR Moon," she asked. "What do you mean, went berserk?"

"Mars went absolutely batshit insane and burned down a church with noncombatants," Serena said, looking at Raye sitting there, crying her eyes out. Lita was down there, trying to comfort her. "We're trying to make sense of this situation. Everything was designated a target, and we reacted appropriately."

"Standby," Luna said. She did a systems diagnostics check, her fingers flying over the keyboard, typing in commands in the command prompt. The system had only been accessed by her, Artemis and Col. Iwasaki, as it was supposed to be. But there was a huge spike in activity five minutes before the assault went down when Amy had scanned the area for targets. There appeared to be a remote user that had been granted root access to all of the operating systems that the SAILOR Team used.

"I have an unknown user here," Luna stated. "The system was accessed five minutes prior to the assault, and designated all noncombatants as hostile enemies."

"Understood," Serena replied, although she didn't really. "Amy…"

"Somebody has remote access to our command and control systems," Amy said. "We've been compromised."

"That is correct," Luna said, monitoring the information on her end. The user was long gone, hidden behind seven proxies and god knows what else, probably bouncing his or her packets all over the globe in a wild goose chase that would probably lead to an internet café in some developing country.

"That's helpful," Amy muttered.

"Is there anything else?" SAILOR Moon asked Luna.

"Negative, I have no further information about the developing situation. Standby."

Meanwhile, Artemis had pulled the satellite feed out to cover a wider area. To the south, he saw long dust trails, emanating from another remote area in Unity State.

He tightened the view up, focusing on the strange dust trails.

"Guys…hey guys! Problems!"

"What is it?!" Serena snapped. "Do you have anything useful to say?!"

"I have ten…no fifteen…twenty technicals headed toward your position at high speed, unknown combatants in vehicles."

"Do they have radios?" Amy asked. "Try to disrupt their communications, we need time to get out of here!"

Luna looked at the area to see if there were any portable radios in use. There were.

"I'm going to try to jam their frequencies," she said. Luna sent a short, garbled radio message that would clog up their radios for at least a couple of minutes.

"The attacking force is losing cohesion," Artemis reported. The satellite feed had gone a bit wonky, but had recovered, showing the vehicles weaving all over the place now, trying to get reorganized.

"SAILOR Moon, you have about fifteen minutes before hostile force approaches your position, recommend that you get to the RV point for extraction." The extraction point was more of the "self-service" variety; a couple of Land Rovers Defenders had been tucked away in a gully a kilometer and a half north of their position.

"I don't think we can make it in there in ten minutes," Serena said into the radio nervously. "We're going to need some support."

"I'll see what I can do," Luna replied. "Artemis, are there any allied units in the area?"

Artemis did a quick search for any units that might be of use.

"Negative, the nearest friendly unit is at least one hour away in Djibouti," Artemis said.

"Uh…no thanks," SAILOR Moon replied. It didn't seem to be a good place to be cracking jokes, but when you had twenty technicals bearing down on you and faced with the horrifying fact that you might have participated in a massacre, some humor was going to be involved.

"Ha ha, very funny," Artemis said. "Get moving."

"Roger."

Lita strong armed Raye into getting up, and started running toward the extraction point, as marked by Amy.

"Mina, can you get those guys to slow down or something?" Serena asked her as they approached the small ridge that Mina had set up her sniper rifle; it was still there.

"Fine, I'll get on it. You'd better come back and get me though." Mina and Amy flopped down on the ground and trained their weapons toward the rising dust cloud in the distance.

"Give me a target," Mina asked Amy. "And don't scan for anything, I don't want to shoot more innocent people today."  
"Agreed, I'll look for targets manually and highlight them when I see em'."

Amy retrieved the binoculars from where she had left them on the ground and trained them toward the south.

"Hostile force is approaching at thirty kilometers per hour," Artemis stated. "Coming from the south."

"Could you be any more helpful?" Amy snarled into the radio.

"Just trying to help."

Amy exhaled, smelling the burning town and the stench of death in the air. "Thanks Artemis," she said, switching her tone and trying to remain calm after what had just happened. "Can you tell me the size of the force now?"

"Still unknown amount of hostiles in the technicals," Artemis replied stoically, upset at the yelling that he was getting from all members of the SAILOR Team.

"Got that."

Amy kept looking through the binoculars, and spotted the lead technical, a beat-up Toyota Hilux with a Browning M2 bolted to the back of it.

"You see that?" she asked Mina.

"I have the target," SAILOR Venus said quietly. Her demeanor had completely changed from a caring person, worried about killing innocents from the before the mission to a serious, determined and cold killer. This was getting out of hand, and the mission needed to stop before anything worse happened.

"Illuminating the target."

Mina's HUD flashed the truck, noting that there were two people in the front and a person on the machine gun in the back. She calculated (with help from the HUD), the distance to target (500 meters), how fast the target was moving (30 kmph), how many targets there were (four, including the truck itself), the wind speed (a light wind, 5 kmph from the south), the humidity (10 percent), and a host of other factors necessary to get a shot in. She lined her scope on the driver of the vehicle.

"Acquired."

"Send it," Amy ordered.

Mina exhaled and gently pulled the trigger back. The .338 bullet exited the M24 rifle going at about 900 meters/second, and reached the target in under half a second, shattering the windshield and vaporizing the driver's head. The truck swerved violently to the left, into another technical and flipped over, immobilizing both of them.

"Nice shot," Amy commented.

"Give me another," SAILOR Venus whispered calmly. She retracted the bolt, the cartridge flying through the air and landing on the hard soil; pushing the bolt forward, she chambered another round.

Amy had never seen SAILOR Venus like this. "Uh…okay. Technical, at 500 meters, going 30 kmph, out of the south, at 11 O'clock."

"I have it." SAILOR Venus targeted the driver.

"Send."

Again, Mina exhaled and pulled the trigger back. Another head blew up in spectacular fashion.

"Next target."

"At 500 meters, going 30 kmph, out of the south, at 12 O'clock."

"Acquired."

"Send."

Another vehicle came to a halt. The gunners on the technicals had finally wisened up and were firing into the general area of their location.

"Taking fire!" Amy said into her radio. "Could use your support, SAILOR Moon!"

"We're almost to the vehicles!" Serena yelled. They had sprinted all the way to the camouflaged position where the two Land Rovers had been stationed. "Lita, get that tarp off of that one over there!"

Lita ripped the tarp off, reveling a worn, but certainly usable Land Rover, armed to the teeth with a HK Grenade Machine Gun (GMG) and a MG4 light machine gun.

"Raye, get on the GMG!" She ordered.

Raye looked confused at her. "I…"

"Just do it!" Lita screamed. "We gotta help Amy and Mina!"

That snapped Raye out of her daze. She quickly climbed into the swivel turret of the GMG and charged the weapon, pulling the handle back and chambering a round.

Serena climbed into the other Land Rover and started it, flooring the acceleration petal and speeding toward the gunfire that was going on the distance.

A round snapped by Amy's head as she fired a burst from her MP5PDW at an approaching technical.

"I have another target!" Amy screamed, highlighting a technical only 100 meters from their position.

"I've got it!" Mina replied. She fired a shot, then quickly pulled back the bolt to chamber another round.

The gunner of the technical went down, as well as the driver.

"More contacts!" Amy looked again at the South of the village to see fifty or so infantry charging toward their position. "Engage at will!"

"I have them, engaging at will." Mina kept a cool head, firing shot after shot, retracting the bolt and chambering fresh rounds.

"I'm out!" She yelled, ejecting the magazine and searching for a fresh one.

"It's here, right here," Amy said, giving her a new one.

"Thanks." SAILOR Venus shoved the magazine into the feed and chambered a round, firing off more rounds at the approaching force.

"Could use that help!" Amy frantically said into the radio.

"We're right here!" Serena yelled back.

Lita hit the accelerator and punched the Land Rover over a ditch to Amy and Mina's position. She then slid the vehicle into place, with Raye bringing the GMG to bear.

"Marking the targets!" Amy individually selected the infantry, but it didn't really matter at this point because SAILOR Mars had already opened fire.

The 40mm grenades spat out of the GMG at 350 rounds a minute, blanketing the attacking infantry in a hail of explosions and shrapnel. The grenades detonated in the air, raining down their payload on the exposed attacking force. Lita got on the MG4 and started firing with that gun as well, the empty cartridges and disintegrating chain collecting at her feet as she pulled the trigger, spitting out death. Within thirty seconds, all the attackers lay dead or dying, their vehicles shattered by sniper fire, grenades or machine gun bullets.

"Is that all of them?!" SAILOR Moon asked. "Does anyone see anything else?"

"I have nothing," Mina replied coldly.

"No movement," Amy said.

"Nothing," Lita and Raye commented.

"Artemis, Luna, do you have anything?"

"I have no movement besides you," Luna responded. "However, recommend getting out of there, there is a large South Sudanese Army convoy headed your way."

"Affirmative," Serena said. "Amy, Mina, get in."

SAILOR Mercury and Venus picked up their gear and tossed in the back of the Land Rover.

"Let's get out of here," Amy quietly said, looking at the torched village, the smashed vehicles, and the dead bodies that littered the ground around them.

"You've got that right," Serena replied.

The SAILOR Team drove off, heading toward their pickup point somewhere north of their position, where a JASDF C-130H would pick them up for transport home.

A couple of hours later, the South Sudanese Army would discover the carnage, and it would be flashed to all major news outlets. Soon thereafter, the foreign news desks of those news outlets would send reporters there, sparking claims of a new genocide going on in the Sudan.


	32. Chapter XXX: PTSD

**Chapter XXX: PTSD**

**1420hrs, 1 December 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"It's a tough war we're in. It's not going to be over right away. There's going to be other wars. I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars." John McCain._

_"Have you ever realized just how insignificant your existence on this planet really is?" Haruhi Suzumiya._

* * *

"How long have they been like this?" asked Dr. Kobayashi to Nurse Kuroi. The girls were back in the sterile holding cells, dressed in medical gowns and nothing else.

"Since they came back from the mission," Kuroi replied.

"How many people died?" Kobayashi asked stoically.

Kuroi accessed the mission report on her tablet computer. "100 plus noncombatant KIA, plus all 100 attacking insurgents killed."

"Christ," Kobayashi said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

"The media is going crazy over this," Kuroi noted. "I heard that the massacre got blamed on a Muslim extremist group, and now there's pogroms all over Sudan and South Sudan. The entire region is destabilizing right now, and all the oil companies are pulling their people out."

"Except one," Kobayashi looked at her, his grey eyes staring blankly.

"Nakanishi," Kuroi replied.

"You bet your ass. They've got this security firm now, and they're adding 'protection' for anyone willing to pay the price."

"What's the price of oil now?"

"I think it's $150 for JCC or something like that," Kobayashi said, looking at his computer. "Whatever that means. More money out of my hide."

Kuroi and Kobayashi continued to stare at the TV monitors, watching the muted and unmoving bodies of the SAILOR Team.

The door to the observation room opened, and Kuroi and Kobayashi turned to look.

"Sorry I'm late." It was Dr. Kawasaki.

"Where were you?" Kobayashi asked.

"I was in a meeting with Iwasaki."

Kobayashi gave him a strange look. "I wasn't told of this meeting."

"You didn't need to know," Kawasaki replied, trying to avoid any sort of conflict but Kobayashi wasn't going down that easy.  
"Uh, that's not true," Kobayashi said to him. "I'm the one in charge of this project."

"Well, maybe Iwasaki just wanted to talk to me," Kawasaki protested, walking over to one of the video monitors and pretending to look at Amy.

"Bullshit." Kobayashi went over to him and grabbed him by the shoulder. "You tell me what the hell is going on here, or you're off this team and your clearance revoked."

Nurse Kuroi stood forward and tried to pull Kobayashi off of Kawasaki, but he stopped her.

"Yuki, it's alright." He looked at Dr. Kobayashi. "Let me go, and I'll talk."

Kobayashi released his hold on him and stood back, glaring at him all the while.

"You're too soft," Kawasaki said to him. "We need to take more drastic action."

"I thought you didn't want to take any action," Kobayashi replied sourly. "And I agreed with you."

"Well, you've seen what's happened," Kawasaki said. "We need to start making more modifications, taking out some of the bad parts and upping the medications."

"We can't do that!" Kobayashi retorted. "These aren't robots! If you start doing more surgery…"

"Yeah, we'll cause all sorts of problems, I know!" Kawasaki shouted. "And right now, we don't have a fucking choice, do we?"

"They need more time to recover!"

"That's a lie, and you know that!" Kawasaki snapped. He walked up to Kobayashi and looked him right in the eyes. "They aren't human anymore, not like this. So it'll be even more easy."

Kobayashi looked at him with disgust. "They're still human, and that's my final decision. We're going to take the entire team offline for a month. Then they can recover, get counseling, we can run more tests in the VR simulators and assess their medical and physiological condition."

"We cannot afford to take the team off for a month."

Everyone in the room turned to see Col. Iwasaki enter through the door. He was out of uniform, wearing a suit and tie instead of the flecktarn pattern of the JSDF.

"Kobayashi, I am seriously doubting your ability to remain on this team," he threatened to him. "I've been making sure that your friend General Ishimura is placated in this matter, but at the end of the day, I don't really care who your friends are, your inability to get things done around here is very concerning."

Kobayashi was taken aback by Iwasaki's comments. "Colonel, I did not use my connections to get to this position."

"I find that very hard to believe," Iwasaki replied. "You did go to school at Waseda University with both of them."

"That was a long time ago!" he protested. "I did not get in touch with them until after I was promoted to this position."

"That's a nice story," Iwasaki dryly said, bored by Kobayashi's concerns with his attitude. "Be that as it may, my only concern is to maintain the operational status of the SAILOR team and to have it ready to conduct more operations later this month."

"They need to be taken off for the entire month," Kobayashi insisted. He took a deep breath in, trying to remain calm. "This is a necessity. The SAILOR team will be combat ineffective unless they get this entire month."

"We have a schedule to meet," Iwasaki said, but quickly shut up. That got Kobayashi's attention real quick.

"Wait a second, a 'schedule?'" he asked in disbelief. Kobayashi started to pace around Kawasaki and Iwasaki, observing them like a hawk. "I'm the one now who has serious doubts now about both of you now. What else don't I need to know on this program? Hmm?"

Iwasaki and Kawasaki looked at each other, and started to back out of the room. But Kuroi stood in the way of the door and glared at them.

"Yuki," Iwasaki started to say, but she just stood there, arms crossed, looking extremely angry.

"Explain yourself," Kobayashi demanded. "Or I'll call my 'friends' you keep going on about."

Iwasaki sighed, pulled out his smartphone and brought up a series of emails between him, General Ishimura, and the PM himself.

"The reason why the SAILOR team has been so busy is because the PM wants it to be," he explained, showing the emails to Dr. Kobayashi. "You'll have to ask him yourself if there are to be any changes to the plan."

Kobayashi looked at the emails. Nowhere was his name mentioned, only referred to as "Medical Chief of the SAILOR Program."

"Fine. I'll ask him."

He pulled out his own phone, and searched through the contacts and found the PM's direct number. Kobayashi hit the green dial button, and held the phone up to his ear.

It took awhile for the PM to pick up the phone. But he did.

"Yeah, this is Hasegawa."

"Hasegawa, it's me. Kobayashi."

"Oh, hey, nice to hear from you. I hope all is going well with your job."

Kobayashi glanced at Iwasaki and Kawasaki, still standing there. He turned his back to them and turned around, trying to make sure that they didn't stare at him the entire time he was talking on the phone.

"Actually, that's what I was calling about."

"Hold on, let me secure this transmission."

There was a silence for a second, a loud click, then the PM started to talk again.

"What's up?"

"I need to take the SAILOR team offline."

The PM took in an audible breath. "We can't do that."

"We need to, or else there won't be a SAILOR team. You'll have a repeat of what happened in South Sudan."

"Dammit Kobayashi," the PM said, taking off his glasses. He thought of the flask in his desk; it had managed to refill itself several times…somehow. "I need that team out there."

"Doing what, sir? So far, the only beneficiary I've seen of the SAILOR team is the Nakanishi Group." Kobayashi knew he was onto something, and he had to make everything count. "Look, I just need to know. I won't get upset or anything, but I need all the facts and such. I can't be left out of the loop again."

"I can't do that Kobayashi," the PM pleaded. "You're the best I have out there, and you don't need to know the bullshit that goes on here in Tokyo."

Kobayashi ignored the PM's request and dove in anyway. "What's the schedule? What timetable is there to meet?"

"Kobayashi…"

"Prime Minster," he said insistently.

The PM looked down at his desk again, wondering if he should tell him about the memo that Beryl had passed him so long ago, telling him what people needed to be gotten rid of, what targets to hit, what companies needed to "disappear", and finally, the authorization for Nakanishi to go through with all the acquisitions that they wanted.

"Here's what I can give you," he said reluctantly. "Some people…"

"You mean Nakanishi."

"Like I said, some people want certain targets eliminated, some buildings blown up, you know the drill."

"And I assume that it's for the 'national interest?'"

"You would be correct in assuming that." The PM allowed himself a small drink from the flask.

"How long did they give you to complete these tasks?"

"Until the end of this year. But…" The PM tried to stop the barrage of questions, but it was no use.

"And how far are we through the list?"

"Kobayashi, I can't continue this conversation any longer," the PM said, unwilling to give any more information. Kobayashi wasn't going to accept that.

"Hasegawa, tell me how much further we have to go!" Kobayashi snapped into the phone.

The PM was silent for a second after that. He could give the information…but if Kobayashi knew how far they had to go…

"How far?!" Kobayashi repeated, forcefully.

"I can't answer that question."

"That's bullshit, and you know it."

"That's all I can give you." The PM was resisting his efforts to pry open more information.

"Then let me tell you this," Kobayashi said. "The SAILOR team will be useless come the next mission if I don't get them some rest, some relaxation. And they won't be able to complete that list of yours. Whoever wants somebody or the other dead, they can fucking wait, because they're not the ones putting their lives on the line here! The girls are, and they're doing a proficient job of it."

The PM knew that Kobayashi was right, and Kobayashi knew that he knew that he was right. There was so much pressure on him though, from Nakanishi, from the Joint Chiefs, from everyone involved, that he was almost paralyzed with indecision.

"Sir, this is your force," Kobayashi stated matter-of-factly. "It's your decision. I will follow your orders, but what I can tell you is that this force will cease to exist if you continue on this path."

"Let me get back to you," the PM said.

"Prime Minister…"

"I will get back to you in a minute…just give me some time." The PM hung up, and clutched the mobile phone close to his face.

"So, what did the PM have to say?" Iwasaki said smugly, his beady eyes staring intensely at the doctor.

"He's going to give me an answer in a minute," Kobayashi replied.

For a minute, everyone stood there in silence, the whoosh of the heating system echoing in the background, the TV and computer monitors humming, Nurse Kuroi's nervous tapping of her foot, Iwasaki's incessant glare at Kobayashi, and Kawasaki's stare at Nurse Kuroi.

Kobayashi's phone rang exactly one minute after he had hung up with the PM, startling everyone in the room. He answered the phone.

"Kobayashi speaking," he said.

"Take the team offline for three weeks."

"Thank you."

"Don't ever call this number again."

"Of course."

With that, the PM hung up on Kobayashi. He pocketed the phone, and looked at Iwasaki.

"We're postponing all missions for three weeks," he announced, wiping the smug look off of Iwasaki's face. "All SAILOR members are to be given a week leave, to any destination they see fit, for R&R, after a week of rehabilitation, psychological evals, and medical checkups. Do I make myself clear?"

"Absolutely," Kawasaki said, glumly. "It's your call."

"This is unbelievable," Iwasaki protested. "I'm going to have a word with General Ishimura about this."

"You go ahead and do that," Kobayashi replied, calling his bluff. "In the meantime, get the staff ready. It's time for some serious repair work."

Iwasaki left in a huff, pushing Kuroi out of the way and slamming the door behind him.

"Well, I think he's not going to be talking to you for awhile," Kawasaki said, somewhat jokingly.

Kuroi went up to him and slapped Kawasaki extremely hard. Kobayashi winced; it hurt just from looking at him getting hit that hard.

"Don't you ever, ever, compromise this project like that ever again," she said sternly, like a mother chastising a child.

"Kuroi…"

"Do you understand me, Kawasaki?" she spat. "Oh, and we're done. For now at least."

She turned around too and slammed the door behind her.

"Ouch," Kobayashi said after she had left. "Reminds me of my late wife."

"Ha ha, very funny," Kawasaki replied. "Make fun of me, why don't you?"

"That's what you get for dealing with Iwasaki," Kobayashi said. "He can't be trusted."

"And the PM? What about General Ishimura?"

"That's…a bit more complicated. They've got a lot more on their plate than Iwasaki could possibly ever handle."

"So what do we do now?"

"Well, we get working on how the microchips are affecting the SAILOR team. Pull up every test, every CT scan, every EKG that we've taken in the last six months on these girls and we're going to get to the bottom of this."

"Right away."

With that, they set about getting their work done.

* * *

"What's this then about someone accessing the system from outside?" Kobayashi asked Luna. They were in the underground laboratory, looking at the girls in the healing solution.

"Amy reported to me that all the people in the village had been designated hostile," she replied, tapping at her tablet computer. "I ran a systems diagnostic and found that our communications had been compromised."

"By whom?"

"I don't know. Whoever did this, wanted to spark off a major chain of events in that area."

Kobayashi sighed and rubbed his balding head. "Did you check the encryption on everything?"

"Yes sir. The only way that someone could have possibly accessed our C4I network is if they had the encryption codes, the computer software to decode said codes, and a physical internet port authorized by the Ministry of Defense."

"So it's not possible for someone to have cracked the system."

"No. You would need all of the cryptologists in the American NSA and all the processing power of about seventeen million average computers to maybe crack this system."

"Or just have direct access to it. Who has authorization to the physical ports?"

Luna ran a mental checklist. "Let's see. Us, of course. There's one at the MOD, and one at the…"

"One at what?"

"The Nakanishi Group…" Luna said, faintly. Her conversation with Amy and Mina came back to her at once. "They have a contract with the MOD…"

"To make our healing solution," Kobayashi finished. "Great. Knew that was going to come and bite me in the ass."

"So we're working for the Nakanishi Group,"

"Took you that long to come to that conclusion, hm?" Kobayashi continued to stare at the girls, still immersed in the healing solution.

"Ten seconds." A technician announced the time remaining in the healing tanks.

"So you knew?"

"Hell, General Ishimura basically confirmed it when he visited here."

"Then why didn't you…"

"There's nothing I can do," Kobayashi said.

"Beginning drain of tanks."

The healing solution, now clear, was drained out and the girls were lifted from their chambers onto stretchers.

"But you knew! You knew about…"

"Luna, look. There's a lot of things I was kept in the dark about. I only learned some…disturbing information from the PM himself this afternoon."

Luna glared at the doctor. His white coat was stained with coffee and food, and the bags underneath his eyes betrayed his tiredness of the situation.

"I don't have a choice in this matter anymore," he said sadly.

"Fine," Luna replied. "But I know someone who does."

She left, leaving him standing there, wondering who the hell would know about the complicated situation between Nakanishi and the SAILOR team.

"Amy…"

Amy was asleep in her room now, but awoke to somebody shaking her.

"Yeah…yeah, what is it?" she replied, groggily. The room was completely dark, and she hadn't had the time to unpack or do anything after the incident in South Sudan.

"It's me, Luna."

"What do you want?"

"I believe you," came a whisper.

Amy sat up in her bed, and blinked away the cobwebs in her mind from her awakened sleep.

"Believe what?"

"Remember that conversation we had a while ago? About that box?"

"Oh yeah." Amy had placed it underneath her bed for safekeeping.

"I know it's underneath your bed."

"Damn."

"That's the first place everyone keeps their stuff," Luna said, winking at her.

"So, what made you come around to the dark side?"

Luna chuckled at that reference. "Funny you should put it like that, but a nice conversation with Dr. Kobayashi put it the situation straight for me."

"So, what does he know?"

Luna leaned in close to hear ear and started whispering.

"He know that this was a Nakanishi operation from the start. The top brass, the PM, everyone at the highest levels was involved in this operation."

This wasn't too surprising to Amy, but it still made her mad.

"They lied to us then," trying to keep her voice from shouting in anger. But she knew that already as well. Why was everything a surprise anymore?

"Yeah well, we all get lied to at some point," Luna said, sitting down on the bed. "But whatever happens, I'm with your team."

Amy nodded at Luna's support. "It's much appreciated."

"You're planning to go to Hong Kong soon?"

"Yeah, to meet…"

"Hush now," Luna said. "Remember, they have this room under surveillance. But remember…we're with you now. So follow me and Artemis' lead when the time comes."

"Wait, when the time comes…?"

Luna had already gotten up from the bed and was walking toward the door. Without any more words out of her, she turned around and nodded to her. She then left.

* * *

About a week or so later, Amy stood in front of Dr. Kobayashi, along with Mina and Col. Iwasaki in his office.

"Let me get this straight," Iwasaki said, glaring at the two of them. "You want to go to Hong Kong. Just for a vacation?"

"Well, Mina and I came up with the idea when we were on one of our missions," Amy replied, giving a nervous look to Mina, who just smiled back. "If we're going to get another week off, I kind of don't want to spend it here. I think it would be best if we got out of here, you know, go someplace else. Someplace where there isn't shooting, or violence, or anything like that. Considering what just happened…"

"Alright, I understand," Kobayashi said with a smile. "You can go."

"Hold on just a moment," Iwasaki butted in. "You two are not going anywhere."

"Uh, but…"

"As your commanding officer…"

"You know, you don't command shit around here," Amy said, uncharacteristically. "We get our orders from the PM, and you're just the middleman around here. We do just fine without you in the field. Sir."

Iwasaki had about enough of their insubordination but Kobayashi stopped him from doing anything else.

"I'm sure that a few days in Hong Kong wouldn't hurt anyone, would it now Colonel?" He looked at him intensely.

"No Doctor, I'm sure it wouldn't." Iwasaki kept glaring at all of them, but there was nothing he could do about the situation presented in front of him.

"So, no mission control, no nothing out of this group here, right?" Mina asked. "I don't want to hear from…"

Artemis and Luna burst into the room just as Mina was about to say "Artemis and Luna."

"Hey, you can't just go running off to Hong Kong," Luna protested, but giving a look to Amy.

"Why…why not?" Amy asked.

"It would still be prudent to have someone to watch over them," Artemis said.

Iwasaki looked at them, back to Kobayashi, back to Amy and Mina, and threw his hands up in defeat.

"You all sort it out," he groaned. "I don't care what you people do now, just be back here after Christmas."

He stomped out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

Luna smiled, and approached Mina and Amy. "Well, I think that someone should be keeping watch over you, just in case of some…developments."

Amy gulped. "Of course. I think it would be prudent to have Artemis as our comm officer for this one."

He nodded approvingly at that statement.

"And I think it would also be prudent for a new communications network to be set up," Luna continued. "We need to make sure that no one…unwanted taps into our network again."

"That sounds good," Amy replied. "I could whip some stuff up."

"Very good then," Kobayashi said to them. "Get started on all that, and have a good vacation."

"We certainly will," Mina said with a smile. "We certainly will."


	33. Chapter XXXI: Chungking Express

**Chapter XXXI: Chungking Express**

**1130hrs, 13 December 2013, Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China.  
**

_"I didn't realize Hong Kong looked so beautiful at night. Such beauty can vanish in a blink. It really isn't worthwhile." Mark Lee, A Better Tomorrow._

* * *

"How the hell did we manage to pull this off?" Mina was standing with Amy near the Chungking Mansions, one of the largest apartment complex in all of Hong Kong. There were thousands of people living there; Indians, Taiwanese, Chinese, Thais, Laotians, Vietnamese, Malays…even the odd European or American could be found there among the cheap apartments, stores, kebab shops and other commercial enterprises. It had been a wretched hive some time ago, with drugs, prostitution, fraud, murder, and every other crime imaginable going on there; but HK had cleaned up their act and it was quickly becoming a nice place to live and visit.

"You told Kobayashi that we needed a vacation," Amy said. She was wearing slacks and a long shirt, coupled with a jacket and some fashionable glasses that contained her HUD. It was kind of cold outside; measuring about fourteen degrees centigrade. She had a nice purse by her side, containing that metal box that had so stumped them back in Japan. Mina had been nicely surprised by the contents of the box after Amy showed her, but had taken it with her just in case they needed it for something.

"I didn't think he would take it that seriously…" Mina replied, looking at that huge, ugly building in front of them. She also had a purse, with jeans, shirt and a jacket as well as sunglasses.

"He's serious about getting us back on track." Amy looked through her glasses and scanned the area. "Anything to help us get all that stuff from the last couple of months off of our chests."

"Did you turn the Nakanishi tracking software off?" Mina asked. She looked suspiciously at a couple of police officers walking by them.

"Hey, 663," one of them said to another. Mina guessed it was his badge number. "Did you finally break up with that airline hostess?"

"Of course, they think we're in the IFC, doing some shopping," Amy said, going through the menu on her HUD. "They still have Artemis as our comm officer. I'm glad he knows what we're up to, even after India."

"He's a good guy," Mina said, looking at Amy with a soft look. "He's just a bit naïve." She was still looking at the police officers as they passed them.

"I didn't know you spoke Cantonese," Amy said to her. "I can barely get Mandarin."

"I can understand it, but speaking it is something else," Mina replied.

"Well that's…" Amy started to say something, but she noticed a couple of men walking on the opposite side of the road from them.

"You see that?" Three men, in heavy jackets, even for this weather, and jeans, moderate build, moderate height (for Asians). Their clothing was somewhat baggy, which could mean that they didn't have the money to afford the right size of clothes, or they had something to hide…

"Yeah, I see them," Mina replied. "They've been following us for about a block."

"Perhaps they're just looking for a quickie," Amy dryly noted. "Right, we have to shake them."

She looked at her map on her glasses HUD.

"Okay, there's a Sheraton up ahead," she said, moving past some tourists, babbling happily in Chinese. "We can lose them in there."

She and Mina walked a quick pace, passing by the entrance of Chungking Mansions but not stopping.

"This is a nice place," Mina said, looking at the gleaming towers in front of them.

"No time to gawk," Amy replied, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her into the hotel.

"They even have a Morton's here!" Mina exclaimed, walking past a restaurant in the hotel. "I bet Serena would be having a fit right now."

"Come on!" Amy hissed. She continued to walk very fast through the lobby, which was bathed in white light and decorated for the upcoming Christmas holiday. There was a staircase in the center of the lobby, and she and Mina dashed up it to the second floor.

"Are they still behind us?" Amy asked Mina. She was still holding her hand.

"Yeah, they're gaining!" Mina saw the three men enter through one of the doors, looking very out of place though in the fancy hotel.

"Can I help you?" Amy almost ran into an employee of the hotel, who was impeccably dressed in a white blouse and skirt, matching her surroundings.

"Ah…yeah…um," Mina replied hastily. The employee was giving both of them an odd look. "We're trying to find the elevators."  
"They're right over there," she said in English, pointing to her left at a bank of elevators.

"Thanks!" Amy ran over to the elevators and hit the up button. She looked over her shoulder and saw the men come running up the stairs…right into the employee they had just spoken to.

"Hey!" she was now in a bad mood. "What are you doing here?"

"We're…uh…" That took the guy off guard.

"Sir, please leave the premises!" She reached for a radio and started calling for security.

Ding. The elevator door opened up and Mina and Amy jumped in, hitting the button for the sixteenth floor.

"Got it!" Mina said, somewhat relieved.

The doors began to close when one of the men that had been following them ran in front of it and tried to put his hand in the entrance.

"No you don't!" Amy delivered a high kick and knocked the guy's hand out of the way, letting the doors close.

"Jesus, that was close." Mina breathed out, finally after that tense chase. "Who do you think they were?"

"I'm scanning the radio frequencies of the security team here," Amy said. She broke through the encryption and accessed the frequency. "I'm patching it to you Mina."

Mina listened in to the frantic conversation going on over the radio net. "Whoa, they're Nakanishi."

"Shit, what?!" That kind of an outburst wasn't usually Amy's style.

"Hold up…they said that they're with the Nakanishi Group and that we're a person of interest. The security team isn't buying it though."

Mina listened some more, but it seemed like the situation had resolved itself.

"Thank god for that," she muttered, almost terminating the conversation on her eyepiece. But then, there was one last burst of traffic.

"Wait…there's a security team waiting for us on the sixteenth floor!" Mina exclaimed. "Why did you pick that floor?!"

"Sorry!" Amy said, flummoxed. "I was just trying to get away!"

Mina looked up at what floor they were on. Twelve…thirteen….fifteen. She had to think of something that would distract the security team. She came up with one real fast.

"Oh god. Amy, you're not going to like this." Mina whipped off her sunglasses and leaned in toward Amy.

"What is…..mmmpphhh!"

Mina grabbed her face and planted a huge kiss on her lips, making sure add some tongue action in there as well.

I hate you so much, Amy thought, but played along. This was going to be so awkward.

The doors of the elevator opened to the sight of two (apparently) lesbian lovers engaged in a passionate moment.

"Uh…" The (male) security team wasn't expecting that.

"Oh…err…" Mina let go of Amy and turned around, fluffing her hair and giving a big, white smile. Amy just kind of stood there, dumbfounded at what had just happened.

And that was my first kiss too, Amy grumbled.

Several awkward minutes later, the security people let them go, convinced that the Nakanishi guys were stalking them and that they were just here in Hong Kong for some "peace and quiet." Mina and Amy apologized profusely for invading their hotel, but were actually offered a free night's stay by the manager for the inconvenience that they had gone through. They politely turned it down, and left for the entrance to Chungking Mansions.

"When do you think this guy is going to show up?" Mina asked Amy, as they were standing by the entrance to Chungking Mansions, on Nathan Road. There were thousands of people walking around, ants in the concrete jungle that was Hong Kong. It was like India, just much more cleaner and a little bit more organized.

"D.D said twelve," Amy replied. "Do you think the Nakanishi guys are still tracking us?"

"I think we gave them the slip," she replied. "The security people told me that they shipped those guys across Victoria Harbor and told them to never come back."

"And thanks to your little stunt back there." Amy was still a little confused about her orientation.

"My pleasure," Mina said, winking at her.

"Stop acting like you enjoyed it," Amy said, very irritated.

"Meh." Mina continued to smile at her.

Amy checked the time on her glasses HUD. 1200hrs.

"Alright, I'm bringing the picture of Hao Chung…Zhong…up and scanning the surrounding perimeter."

Mina saw the picture come up and Amy's subsequent scan of the area. Even though there were thousands of people walking in and out of shops, driving cars, and engaging in their normal, everyday business the facial recognition software would be able to find the person they were after.

"Did that D.D person fly into HK today?" Mina asked Amy, looking around for their target.

"Yeah, but he's staying pretty far away from this place." Amy kept scanning, but no such luck.

They waited there for ten minutes or so, looking around and in general, acting pretty touristy in the process. Mina went and looked at some of displays in the nearby shops and Amy walked around the entrance to the Mansions, avoid the aggressive hawkers and their wares. Amy stamped her feet and walked some more, trying to stay a little bit warm, watching her breath puff out in the cold, but humid air.

"Hey, Amy, I've got a match."

Mina was standing by the window front of a technology store when her HUD identified a match on the target.

"What's the probability?"

"Eighty-five percent." Mina highlighted Hao Zhong and started to walk toward him, keeping her purse close by, her trusty Glock 26 ready to go. He was wearing a fedora and a long trench coat, with a brown scarf.

"I'll take that," Amy said. She started to walk toward Mina's position.

"Does he see us?" Mina asked.

"I don't think so. Wait." Amy saw Zhong reach into his pocket and pull out a mobile phone.

"I'll try to tap into the call, standby." She accessed the communications towers in the area, triangulating the call that Zhong was making to the hotel where D.D was staying at.

"Got it. Listening in."

"Where are you?" Zhong asked, irritated. "This is very important."

"I'm sorry Zhong," D.D replied. "It's over."

"What do you mean, over? Just because you got a couple of shots thrown at you doesn't mean anything. It wasn't Nakanishi. My contacts said…"

"Your contacts don't know shit. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a potential wife to meet."

"Wait!" Zhong said, part in protest, part in desperation.

"Oh, and expect a couple of women there to meet you. They have the box."

Zhong immediately looked around and saw Mina coming up to him, about ten meters away.

"Shit!" He dropped the phone and started to run inside Chungking Mansions.

"He's running!" Mina gave chase, pushing some hawkers away from her and dashing down the long gauntlet of shops.

"I'm right behind you!" Amy yelled. She ran down the row of stores and went an alternate route pre-programmed by her HUD, showing the probable route and exits out of Chungking, based on Zhong's physical strength (not good), his endurance (pathetic, he smoked two packs a day and his body fat percentage was 19 percent) and his general knowledge of the area (quite good, but the other two parts slowed him down).

"He's heading toward the back of the Mansions," she reported to Mina, sending a projected course. "He knows the area, so be careful."

"Got it." Mina continued the chase, past the curry stalls, the sari shops, the bootleg movie stores, knocking over display items and making a mess of things in her pursuit of Zhong up ahead.

Zhong hurried as fast as he could, huffing and puffing all the while, but the blonde lady behind him was gaining on him, despite his dodging between the stores and the stalls. He knew that if he continued on this route, it would take him out by the Hong Kong Guest house…he had a friend there that could hide him and…

Wham.

Amy blindsided him and pushed him into a group of stalls holding canaries.

"Ow!" he yelled out, before Mina and Amy pulled him up and rushed him away from a gathering crowd of onlookers into an alley some distance away.

"Hey…what the fuck! Let go of me you crazy bitches!" he yelled at them in Mandarin.

"Oh hush," Mina replied in English. She was holding him against a wall, restraining him against his attempts to get away. "Know what this is?" She nodded to Amy, who pulled out the metal box.

Zhong's eyes bulged out when he saw that box.

"You got that from D.D?" he asked in English and disbelief.

"Like the man told you," Mina said.

"You were listening into my conversations?!"

"Yeah, there's a lot of things can do," Amy replied with a slight smile. "Now, what's in this box?" Something to throw him off for a second; they obviously knew, but he didn't.

Zhong looked at her, then back to Mina, then back to Amy.

"You can't open the box here…" he slowly said.

"Oh, try me," Amy replied. She fiddled around with it, and popped the lid open, retrieving the keycard inside of it. "What's this do then?"

Zhong's eye's bulged out and he struggled against Mina's grip, but she tightened her hold on him.

"Answer the damn question," Mina said.

"That's what I need to destroy Nakanishi!" Zhong said desperately, his eyes darting from Amy to Mina, Mina to Amy.

"Then what does it open?!" Amy poked him in the ribs, reminiscent of her first interrogation.

Zhong took in a breath, inhaling the smells of the city, the cooking of meat, freshly washed laundry, some piss added in with that, car exhaust, and the odor of unwashed bodies coming from the apartments.

"Alright, you got me," he said. Zhong hung his head (or as much as Mina would allow him), in defeat.

"Where can you use it then?" Amy asked once more, calmly this time.

"It's a key to the safe I have over in the International Finance Center. At the Mitsui branch over there."

Mina and Amy breathed in. That would mean going over to the place that they had said they were going to be.

"You do know that there's a branch of the Nakanishi Group over in that building there?" Amy commented, wondering if they wanted to commit suicide entering that building.

"Yeah, that's why I hid it there. Right underneath their noses. At least I'm not using their financial services, now that would be suicide, heh." Zhong seemed pretty confident of his plan. It was more folly than brilliant planning to the SAILOR team, however.

"Wonderful," Mina groaned. She looked at Amy.

"Well, we don't have much choice." Mina took Zhong by the collar and walked him down the alley.

"Wait, we're not going there…are we?"

"Oh yes, and much more." Mina hailed a passing cab and shoved Zhong in, taking a seat next on his right and Amy on his left.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

"Tee-hee," Mina giggled, putting on her dumb blonde routine. "Where are we going…boss?"

Amy just smiled, trying not to look too embarrassed in this situation.

Zhong looked stunned, but quickly recovered.

"Uh…uh…the IFC building."

"You know there's a no drive zone…" the taxi driver said, but Zhong cut him off.

"Just get us close enough, we can walk," he replied in a snippy tone.

"Right away."

The taxi drove away, zipping through traffic, red lights, and other taxis, reinforcing the "bad Asian driver" stereotype.

Thirty minutes later, they were in the lobby of the IFC, hustling Zhong along and trying not to look suspicious.

"Which floor is the bank on?" Mina asked.

"It's on…" Zhong started to say, but Amy had already beat him to it.

"The seventh floor." She had looked it up on her HUD, which was connected to her glasses.

"Wrong, it's on the eighth floor," Zhong corrected. "The bank proper is on the seventh floor, but the safe in on the eighth one."

Mina jabbed him in the ribs for that.

"Ow!"

"Yeah, it'll be a lot more painful if you keep that up," Mina said to him. Zhong rubbed his right side, where both Amy and Mina had poked him, wincing in pain. There really wasn't much he could do about it, so he continued along with the two of them to the elevators.

Ding. "Eighth Floor, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation." The elevator had a proper computerized announcer and everything.

As the doors opened, they revealed a proper lobby, with a flatscreen TV, a reception desk, and a couple of couches and sofas for waiting customers. There was a guard at the desk, along with a receptionist.

"Hello there," the receptionist said in flawless American English. "Nice to see you again, Mr. Han. It's been awhile since you've been here."

"Uh, yeah, nice to see you Ms. Shan," Zhong sputtered back. He actually put it under "Han Zhao", since that was a pretty common name, and if Nakanishi wanted to find him, they were going to have to do a lot of paperwork in order to find that one goddamn safety deposit box.

"Who are your friends?" she asked him, somewhat flirtatiously, but also out of suspicion.

"They're…professional acquaintances," he replied, sweating profusely. It was certainly hot here in the room, as it was kind of cool outside. Of course, something else was hot as well…

"I see," the receptionist said. "Do you have your key?"

Zhong nodded. Amy reached inside her purse and pulled out the box.

"Very good. Please open it up." Zhong did so, and took out the keycard.

"I see that storage container has been damaged, would you like a replacement for that?" Ms. Shan asked him. She looked at the two women next to him, and wondered if they had anything to do with that.

"No, no, it's alright." Zhong handed the card to her, and she inserted it into a bank of empty keycard slots. The light on her computer screen turned green for Zhong's safety deposit box inside the safe they had behind her.

"You two will have to wait out here," she said to Mina and Amy.

"Aw, come on!" Mina whined. "You said you were going to show us!" She tugged on Zhong's arm, making sure to play it up for everyone watching. "Please?"

"I…uh…"

"You're going to have to be entered into the system then," the receptionist replied, now looking very suspiciously at those two. There was actually a limited-entrance policy regarding visitors, and for those who vouched for them, could be let in for a certain amount of time. She motioned to a digital fingerprint scanner, along with a retinal scanner on her desk.

"Please place your right index finger on the scanner." Mina and Amy looked at each other, but complied.

"Now please look into the eye scanner." Again, the two did so.

"Mr. Han, I'm going to have you sign this voucher for these two." She pulled out a piece of paper, stating that he could be charged with a variety of different crimes if he knowingly allowed people to come in there and to rob the place, basically.

"And I need you two to sign these forms….and sign here…and here."

Five minutes of paperwork later, more scanning and another battery of background checking, they were clear to go in with Mr. Zhong.

"Thank you for being cooperative," the receptionist said, opening the door to the safe. She motioned for them to move in.

"Thanks Ms. Shan."

Mina and Amy nodded in thanks, and followed him into the safe. What they didn't see what the receptionist push a small button, alerting the security force to an internal emergency, without calling the police. Despite all of the paperwork, she still didn't trust them.

Inside the safe room, there was another waiting area with a guard, armed with a Beretta 92F. He asked for their signatures on yet another waver, another fingerprint and retinal scan, and finally, they were let into the safe. He didn't ask for their purses or anything, though he did a quick check through them. Finding nothing (their pistols were hidden in a false pocket), he allowed them access to the safe.

"Please hit the buzzer when you want to be let back out," he told them, shutting the safe door behind them.

"Well, that was sure fun," Amy said to Zhong, letting go of his arm. Gross.

There were rows and rows of deposit boxes here, with a desk and a small table in the center for viewing the contents of the box.

"Where's your safety deposit box?" Mina asked.

"It's the one over here." He went to a box that had a green light on it.

"No external keys. Nice," Amy commented. "All access is controlled from the front desk."

"And that's why I put my information here."

"Well, that's great and all, but can you show us the information?" Mina asked impatiently.

"Fine." Zhong went over to the box and pulled it out, revealing a laptop computer. He set it down on the desk, plugged the charger into a socket that was in the floor. It took a couple minutes for the computer to boot up, but after that, Zhong accessed an video file he had encrypted on the hard drive.

"What's that?" Mina asked, pointing to the icon on his GUI.

"When I was working with Nakanishi, they invited me to their headquarters in Tokyo. I figured at some point, they would try to get rid of me, so I made an insurance plan."

"Which would be…?"

"I planted a spy camera on their projector in their meeting room," he said, typing in some passwords to gain access to the file. "There are some very interesting conversations, but this one takes the cake."

Mina and Amy crowded around him, waiting in anticipation.  
"This will blow your mind." Zhong clicked on the video file and played it.


	34. Chapter XXXII: Deals with Devils

**Chapter XXXII: Deals with Devils.**

**1430hrs, 9 October 2013, Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan**

_"And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Luke 4:5-6._

_"The infernal serpent; he it was whose guile, Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived, The mother of mankind." John Milton, Paradise Lost._

* * *

"Thank you all for being here."

Beryl's voice rang out in the oversized conference room at the top of the Nakanishi headquarters. They had bought out several buildings in the area, and now they towered over everything after some creative renovations, dominating the skyline with their glass windows, stainless steel and reinforced concrete. The room itself was again, extremely large for just having one table, five chairs and a projector that came down from the ceiling.

"I know that you all have been busy with our operations overseas, but I wanted to call this meeting together to…discuss our upcoming plans concerning our future business."

"Beryl, you don't have to use euphemisms," Zoisite said. "We all know what we're doing, so let's cut the bullshit and get to it."

"Zoisite, don't be rude now," she said to him. "But you and Kunzite over there have been dragging your feet on this. Perhaps if you spent less time in the bedroom, and more time out in the field…"

Jadeite snickered at that.

"Got a problem with that?" Kunzite asked him.

"Oh no, not at all," Jadeite replied slyly. "I just never had the experience of having…"

"Enough," Beryl interrupted. "We're here to talk about control of the markets, not what we do in the bedroom."

Kunzite and Jadeite glared at each other, then swiveled their chairs to face Beryl again.

"Anyway, we've had record profits ever since the SAILOR team has been dealing with our competitors. Practically all of the people who've been attacked by them think that it's the North Koreans, or terrorist groups, or just plain accidents. Some are getting suspicious though."

Beryl pulled up a picture of some CEOs and board of directors. "These people are starting to band together and create a network of security that allows for better protection and communication between protection professionals and themselves."

"So, we need to be more judicious in picking out targets then," Kunzite said. "In the post attack world, it might even be tougher to get at these people."

"That's the next point I wanted to get at," Beryl said. She brought up more slides of the world, and each of the four company officers' assigned districts.

"How is progress in the last stage of our operation?" She looked around the room.

"Well, I know that Jadeite is doing well." She smiled at him. "He's the only person in this room who checks up with me all the time. Maybe you should learn take an example from him."

"Ass kisser," Kunzite muttered.

"What was that?" Beryl asked.

"Nothing, nothing."

"Maybe you could give us a report on how things are holding up in the Middle East?"

Kunzite sighed.

"As you well know, the Middle East is not that hard to plan attack in. But the Suez Canal operation…that's been a bit of a challenge. But it's doable, and I have all the pieces in place, ready to go."

"And it will go," Beryl said, confidently.

"Yes, of course. I will have some ships from contracted companies destroyed in the Canal. They will be packed with explosives, and under the guise of normal weapons trafficking between countries, they will be exploded in the Canal area, taking other ships with them and stopping commercial traffic through the area." He read coldly from his tablet computer, looking over the specs of the plan.

"Very good. You had other things as well?"

"Besides the increased piracy off of Somalia, the insurgency in Iraq, the continued unrest in Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, the destabilization of the democratically elected government in Egypt? No, I have nothing else that I'm working on at the moment. I'm also working on some plans for the oil in the Sudan that we discussed earlier, but I don't know if that's good enough for you."

"Uh." Jadeite raised his hand.

"What is it?" asked Kunzite in a frustrated tone.

"If you block off the Suez Canal, won't the pirates off of Somalia have nothing to do because…"

"Yes, I know that!" he snapped back. "I'm fully aware that it's a pointless operation after we seal up the Suez, but for now, it's a nice distraction to keep NATO and other nations busy there and away from our operation in Socotra."

Jadeite raised both his hands now in mock surrender. "Sorry for asking such questions," he said.

"Nephrite, how are your plans coming along?" Beryl now moved on to the next important phase in the operation.

"They've been going actually quite well. The Americans have replaced some of the Capitol Police with our security firm, and that will allow for more movement within the capitol. We have moved the equipment and arms to the processing plants that we've purchased, and with all the attention focused on finding missing Russian warheads, we can freely move material in the United States with the transportation companies we've purchased in the last couple of months."

"Excellent, and the nuclear material will be placed…?" Beryl knew most of this information anyway, but having it repeated again made sure that she knew that everyone was on the same page.

"We've hired several companies, or simply bought them out if they didn't comply, to transport this material all over the United States in our special, uh, 'meat processing' plants that we've acquired in the last year or so. Again, all of the nuclear material will be inert, except for the one in Washington and New York. The yield on both weapons is very low, at five kilotons each, but that's more than enough to destroy a good part of those cities. We don't need to destroy all of them, just enough." Nephrite noted that it was ironic, seeing that their country was the one that had suffered the wrath of nuclear warfare some seventy years prior. And it would "only" be five kilotons. Enough to kill thousands of people, contaminate a region for years, and cause enough misery and suffering for everyone unfortunate enough to not be vaporized or killed outright by the blast.

"And they're timed for the session before Congress dismisses for the winter break?" Beryl was pacing up and down the room now, looking all the while at Nephrite, her heels clacking on the marble floor. Nephrite stared back, unperturbed. He was still thinking about the irony of the entire situation.

"Precisely, we actually made the congressmembers we control call this session and take it up with the president. All of our targets will be in one place, at one time. The lobbyists have made sure that they have kept up the pressure."

"Very…very…very good," Beryl said. She was impressed with Nephrite's operation; his was probably the most complex out of all of the four operations going on at the time. Even if it did fail, it would cause a massive scare across the United States, throwing the nation into chaos, not to mention the other attacks in the world. She would like the mission to succeed, and there was a high probability that it would, but you never know…

"By the way, how are those two trouble makers doing?" Beryl asked, stopping back the front of the table.

"You mean Representative O'Conner and Representative Clemens?"

"Yes."

"I'm sure they won't be giving us much trouble. They tried again to alert the president due to information from our…friend in India, but he won't be giving them much trouble any more. And if the president does get word through them, the VP is all ready to go, just in case."

Beryl nodded approvingly of Nephrite. "Thank you."

Zoisite raised his hand.

"Yes, Zoisite?" Beryl replied, annoyed. She quickly recovered though.

"What purpose does killing off all our representatives in Congress do for our mission?" he asked inquisitively. "I mean, no offence to Nephrite here…" he looked at him, and by his glance, he meant "In all offence to your bollocks plan…"

"It might be a short term loss," Nephrite replied, ignoring Zoisite's slight. "But there is only so much we can do with the existing members. They all have their own concerns, ambitions, and ideals; with them, our influence is merely a tool for their own interests. If we wipe them all out, we can start anew, building a nation in the form that would benefit us without actually having to do all the work of administering a large nation such as the United States. Or Japan, for that matter."

Zoisite nodded, somewhat satisfied by his answer. Seeing that there were no more questions, Beryl moved on.

She turned her attention to Jadeite.

"Jadeite, I know you've been busy here in Asia, and I know most of your operations, but please enlighten your less communicative comrades." Jadeite had been politely sitting in the back of the table, and was taking a sip of tea from the ornate china that had been placed out for them.

"I have organized several fringe groups in several nations in Asia, including North and South Korea, Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippians and India to carry out multiple attacks just before Nephrites' operation takes place in the United States. Targets include major industrial centers, political institutions, hospitals, universities, police stations, data centers, military bases and especially overseas American ones, overseas corporate headquarters, and several ports."  
"What kind of specific groups have you organized?" Zoisite asked him. He wasn't convinced of Jadeite's plan…it was way too ambitious, with too many people and equipment involved. Somebody might figure out the trail and point it back to them.

"Like I said before, fringe groups, such as the Japanese Red Army…"

"I thought they disbanded," Nephrite interrupted.

"They haven't, trust me," Jadeite replied, somewhat annoyed. "I had a meeting with the successor to the JRA, the Movement Rentai, and they're all set to go here."

"Does it involve attacks on our buildings and personnel?" Kunzite asked.

"It has to, otherwise people start getting suspicious." Jadeite wiped his head with a handkerchief. It seemed like it was above thirty degrees in the room, and wearing this stupid business suit didn't help either. Plus, he seemed to get all the questions nowadays, and that was making him nervous.

"I see," Kunzite replied, content with that answer. "Please, continue."

"Like I was saying, other groups I have been in contact with include North Korean Special Operations Agents, South Korean Nationalists, Tibetan Nationalists, disaffected mobsters, Naxalites, former LTTE personnel, radical labour movements, environmental extremists, and if all else fails, I just pay some local hoodlums to make trouble when I send an SMS to them."

"How did you get environmentalists to work with nationalists?" Zoisite said, scratching his head in confusion. "I wouldn't think that would work out very well."

"I keep them in separate cells, isolated from each other. It serves as a two-fold safety net; if a cell gets exposed, the other one stays safe, and they can't get at each other if they have ideological differences since they don't know where the other cells are."

"That's…good." Zoisite STILL didn't look very convinced, but there was nothing that Jadeite could do to convince his European counterpart of the logic of his plan.

"I think that's enough questions for now," Beryl said, sensing that Jadeite was coming under increasing scrutiny from the rest of the people at the table. "Let's take a break, and then Kunzite can give an update on his sector. I have to make a couple of phone calls anyway. We'll meet back here in ten minutes."

She walked out of the room, heels still clacking, leaving the four men standing there, staring at each other.

"Well, this is coming along quite swimmingly," Kunzite said, shooting a look at Jadeite. "I'm going to get a smoke, Zoisite, care to join me?"

"Certainly." Zoisite and Kunzite left the room arm in arm to the designated smoking lounge right outside the conference room. Jadeite didn't really mind Kunzite and Zoisite being gay, it was just that Kunzite had it in for him or something like that.

That just left Nephrite and Jadeite in the room now.

"How's America treating you?" Jadeite asked Nephrite, picking up his tea cup again. "I can tell you for sure, America is so much better than India. God, it fucking stinks all the time there."  
"I know, I know," Nephrite said, poking at his Blackberry. "We all had to do a stint with the Asia division, and India is probably the worst out of all of them. You probably got the short straw on that one though since India is expanding their economy and such."

Jadeite shrugged. "I'll put up with it, so long as this operation gets us a huge fat profit. Then, I'm going to help open up the South American division when we can, and I'm never leaving the Caribbean after that."

"The Caribbean is in North America," Nephrite pointed out, still pressing buttons on that infernal machine.

"Oh…" Jadeite sat back in his chair. "Then I'll just spend all my time in Rio de Janeiro. I know Spanish, and it's the capitol of Brazil, so no problem there."

"They speak Portuguese in Brazil, and the capitol is Brasilia," Nephrite said again, shooting down Jadeite's dreams.

"Ah…" That left Jadeite speechless for a second. "Maybe setting up the South American division would be a bad idea anyway." He struggled for a moment to find something else to say; he was not the stereotypical Japanese who would let things be silent for a long while.

"How's that girl of yours…uh…Molly…?"

"Molly Baker, I'm actually talking to her right now." Nephrite poked out a couple more words on his keypad in English, then sent the message to her.

"What time is it over there?"

"It's about 0130."

"That's pretty late."

"Not if you're in love," Nephrite said, with a smile. "We've been going pretty steady actually, ever since she graduated from school in Japan and came over to the states."

"How did you meet her?"

"She applied for an administrative assistant job at our HQ in Delaware, and she did a pretty good job working for the lobbyist division, so I picked her up for dinner one night and the rest is history."

"That's so romantic," Jadeite joked, pretending to swoon with love.

"Really now…" Nephrite smiled back. "I…she's special."

"They all are," Jadeite said, jadedly.

"You don't understand," Nephrite replied in protest. "There's something between her and me that…that binds us together. Every time we make love, every time we see each other, every time we talk…" He trailed off for a second, glancing at the projector in the middle of the ceiling. "There's just something there, and it's crazy, I know."

"You are crazy," Jadeite smirked. "My advice? Dump her, she's only in it for your money and power, and you certainly don't need that load right now."

Nephrite sighed at Jadeite's comment. He was still young, and getting tied down with a romantic relationship was far from his mind at the moment. "Whatever Jadeite."  
"Your loss."

Kunzite and Zoisite came back into the room, still arm in arm, chatting loudly and smelling of cigarette smoke.

"Hey guys," Kunzite said. "Get any good gossip about us while we were gone?"

"Shut the fuck up," Jadeite shot back. "We were just discussing personal business."

"Hey, that reminds me," Kunzite continued. "You're the only one in this room that doesn't have a relationship yet."

"I think Beryl's free, if you're interested," Zoisite said, sitting back down in his chair and taking a biscuit from the tray in the middle of the table.

"That's not funny," Jadeite replied. "I don't…"

"…Like women? Join the club," Zoisite said. "Oh wait, you're not like us, you just think women should be in the kitchen all day. So what do you think about Beryl running the show here?"

"She's different."

"Is she?" Kunzite approached him threateningly. "Oh right, you would know."

"Look, she's the boss and…"

"Well lookie here, we've got ourselves a class A case of displacement theory," Kunzite retorted sarcastically.

"That's enough boys." Beryl's click-clacking of her heels brought them back to the meeting at hand. They all sat back down in their chairs, with Beryl taking her place at the front of the table. "Zoisite, I am single. But Jadeite's not really my type," she said causally. Zoisite and Kunzite looked at each other, somewhat embarrassed.

"Alright then, Zoisite, you're last."

"Well…" Zoisite looked a bit uneasy now. And he gives me trouble about my plan, Jadeite thought to himself. That arrogant bastard.

"Beryl, there's been a slight deviation of plans," he said, rubbing his hands together out of anxiety.

"And these would be…?" Beryl had a stormy look on her face now. If it wasn't for his high standing, she would have probably killed him at some point. But COOs were hard to replace, and especially good ones like Zoisite.

"Well, getting groups organized in Europe has been, how should I put it, problematic."

"How problematic?"

"The only major place I've got terrorist cells organized is in the UK, and that's only in England proper. I've got single cells in France, Germany and Italy, but Beryl, the security services there are extremely diligent about terrorist activity, even more so than the United States."

"Dammit," Beryl said. "I knew that this would be a problem," she said.

"I do have part of a solution, but it involves getting into the other sectors of operation."

"Let me hear it."

"You know about the software that we developed for the government and the corporate sector? The one that ties into all of their databases and such?"

"Yes, I remember. There's a backdoor in several of the programs that allows for remote access."

"Correct, I have a couple of computer programmers who work for me. They're the ones who developed the software and can remotely shut down the software from anywhere in the world, disrupting the response time to the terrorist attacks that will occur."

"There's a catch to all of this, isn't there," Beryl noted sourly.

Zoisite sighed. "Yes, there is. If we use the backdoor for this purpose, then we'll most certainly be found out. We can hide our involvement with terrorist and insurgent groups, but once we shut down the software, everyone and their mum will know who did it, considering that our programs make up almost fifty percent of government and corporate use."

Beryl tossed the pen she was holding down on the table in front of her, giving a groan in frustration. She knew that the European operation was going to be difficult, but seeing that the EU was one of the largest economies in the world, it would be stupid not to disrupt their economy to Nakanishi's favor.

"But."

Beryl looked up from her notes on the meeting. "But what?"

"I can ask the team to do a limited strike on the Ministry of Defense in the UK, most of the US Information Warfare Network in the US Military, or the integrated combat network of NATO."

"So that's an either/or statement then," Beryl scowled.

"Anything more than that will draw red flags. I can do it, but even one of those attacks will require…a significant cost. As in, we would lose the people doing the attacking."

"How so?"

"We would have to take a major reputation hit, since it would involve a massive cyberattack on systems we have software for. It wouldn't be linked to us, but the authorities would definitely be wary of using some of our security services in the near future."

Beryl paced around for a second, thinking over the options. Taking a reputation hit would be bad, but maybe they could shunt blame to the DOD, which would be under fire from all sides (literally, in some cases) for their poor handling in the wave of terrorist attacks that would sweep America. And plus, with Nakanishi in the best position to recover post-attack, they would have to go with them.

"Who are these hackers?" she asked.

"Anne and Alan. You remember them."

Beryl glared at Zoisite, gripping the cold marble table with her hands. Those two. They didn't even do much; they just sat around, bitched and whined about being tired all the time and then went home to have a marathon round of sex. And there were rumors that they were actually brother and sister. Now that was just…wrong.

"Yeah, they got into my personal email one time…and you promoted them," she snarled.

"That's the way it goes in the computer world," Zoisite said. He scratched his ear, wondering if this could get any more complicated.

"Fine, have them attack the US Network then. That'll slow down the response time anyway. Is there anything else in Europe that you can dredge up?"

"I can try to incite riots, and get local activist groups all riled up," Zoisite replied, looking at his notes. "France is always had a tense relationship with its immigrants, as well as many of the other European nations, so maybe that could cause some trouble."

"Zoisite, that's not what we need," Beryl replied, becoming more agitated by the minute. "I need real and direct action on valuable targets, not rioting or civil unrest." But she realized that there was nothing that she could do about that, again, the security services were difficult to get past.

"Just try to get more groups organized in Europe," she said. Beryl played with a pen on the table, wondering if Europe was the straw that was going to break their back.

"Is that it?" Beryl asked the entire table. "Did I miss anything?"

Everyone shook their head no.

"Fine. There's another thing."

Kunzite looked at her, confused. "And…what would that be?"

"We don't have a name for this operation."

"What, N-Day wasn't good enough?" Jadeite scoffed.

"I would like something better than that," Beryl replied. "Maybe something with some more punch to it."

The entire group sat back in their chairs, wondering what to call the massive operation ahead of them.

"I've got an idea," Jadeite said after a couple of minutes.

"What is it?" Beryl asked.

"Operation Take Hold."

Even Zoisite was impressed. "That's nice and simple," he said. "Kind of like you, Jadeite."

"Thank you, Zoisite," Beryl interrupted, trying to prevent her company officers from going at each other's throats. "Alright then, this operation will be called: Operation Take Hold, or OTH. Sound good?"

There were nods in agreement.

"There is one last thing we must discuss," Beryl then stated, switching slides on the projector.

"The performance of the SAILOR Team."

"Well, they've seemed to be doing a great job," Zoisite said. "I wish that we could use them to take out all of our opponents like that."

"And that's why we have an operation like this," Beryl replied. "Regionally, we're doing much better. But we need to be on a global scale, hence Operation Take Hold. Anyway, back to the SAILOR Team."

"Is there something wrong with them?" Kunzite asked.

"There's going to be something wrong," Beryl said. "Uh…I was certain that this was a foolproof operation, ever since Chung…Zhong…whatever his name is went missing. So far, he hasn't caused any trouble, but that operation near Hikawa temple was not something I was expecting. The girls have been doing well, but a source inside the research department tells me that they won't last until the end of the year."

"What's going wrong?" Jadeite asked.

"They retain everything, that's what," Beryl said, looking at some of the email correspondence with her contact. "The microchips increase their performance, but at the expense of their mental wellbeing. By December, they'll be drooling zombies."

"So why did we ask the PM to go ahead with this project?!" Jadeite asked, somewhat annoyed. He loosened his tie, trying to remain comfortable in the room that seemed to be getting hotter all the while.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Beryl snapped back. "The way that Dr. Kawasaki and Dr. Kobayashi presented the project made it like they were going to be invincible super soldiers or something like that. Now, Kobayashi is having second thoughts and Kawasaki is complaining to Col. Iwasaki about not being able to perform more surgeries on them to ensure that this does not happen."

"Get rid of Kobayashi then," Kunzite said.

"It's not that simple. The COS of the JASDF knows Kobayashi. So does the PM. And the PM is having massive doubts of his own on this project as well. So, I can't really do anything about it until this operation commences, and the scale of the SAILOR missions will have to be limited to what I gave the PM earlier this year. Only after this operation, we can have some leverage over the PM, over Kobayashi, the JSDF, and the politicians we have in our pockets right now."

"That sounds complicated," Zoisite mocked, imitating Jadeite's voice.

"Yes, it is complicated," Beryl shot back. "Well, that wraps up that part. Any more questions?"

There were none. The four men at the table stared blankly back at her, waiting to get out of there.

"Very good then," Beryl said, snapping her binder that held her notes together. "You know the start date, 1730hrs on 16 December 2013 on the East Coast of the US. Do not fail me. The company's success depends solely on you four, and if we fail…the consequences are too great to contemplate."

"What about Yamada?" Kunsite asked.

"I will deal with the CEO of this company personally, when the time comes. He's too coked out of his mind to do anything right now, so we can operate however we want. Thank you gentlemen, have a nice day."

With that, she walked out of the room, heels click-clacking on the floor.


	35. Chapter XXXIII: Revelations

**Chapter XXXIII: Revelations**

**1430hrs, 13 December 2013, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People's Republic of China  
**

_"Once war has been undertaken, no peace is made by pretending there is no war." Udyoga Parva, The Mahabharta._

* * *

"Oh my god." Amy and Mina were left speechless at the recording that Zhong…Chung…whoever had just played for them.

"It's unbelievable," he said to them, staring at the video on the computer screen. "I had to play it several times to actually understand what was going on."

"That's some insurance policy you have there," Mina said. "You were planning to take it to Nakanishi?"

Zhong nodded vigorously. "Well, yeah. I was hoping that they would stop coming after me and perhaps get a lot of money. Set me up for life, you know?"

"I thought you were smarter than that," Amy replied. "Nakanishi would have never let you go if they knew you had this information."

Zhong didn't understand. "But I thought that…"

"Listen, you're in deep shit," Mina said. "Nakanishi has already screwed you over once, and they will do it again."

"They can't touch me if they know I have this information," Zhong protested back. He waved to the computer. "If something were to happen to me after this date, this information would be sent to all the major news networks, all major law enforcement agencies in Japan, the United States and Europe, and would implicate everyone involved."

"I don't think so," Amy said. She pointed at his computer that was sitting on the desk in the safety deposit room. "Who made that computer?"

"Uh…" Zhong took a look at it. It said "NAKANISHI GROUP, MODEL T800."

"Oh shit."

"Oh shit is right," Mina said. "The minute you send anything out, they have your exact location and all the information you had on them. The only reason that nothing bad has happened is because you've only used that computer on a closed network, in this secure building. The moment you set foot outside this building with that information, or access the internet, or do anything to transmit that information, you're hosed."

Amy looked at Mina. How did you know all of that? she thought.

Heh, I'm so good, Mina smirked on the inside. Amy's freaking out on how I know all of that. I'm not that dumb.

"So my plan…" Zhong began.

"Was completely doomed from the start," Amy said. "You would have probably died. Here…"

She pulled out a flash drive and connected it to the computer. "Should have kept it on one of these." It only took a couple of seconds for the data to transfer over.

"I've got one more question, Mr. Zhong," Amy asked him, giving the computer back to Zhong. "Why did you blow us up?"

"Who is us…?" It took him a second to realize who he was talking to. He gulped and continued on. "You're the people that I had that Korean guy blow up." He looked down in shame. Zhong hadn't been the one to detonate the explosion, but he might as well have.

"Yeah, that would be us," Mina quietly said. "Why did you do it?"

Zhong looked down at the ground, ashamed of his actions. "I owed Jadeite a favor, from a long time ago when he bailed me out of a situation when I working with the Ministry of State Security. So, he told me to blow up some high school named Azabu Jūban. But I'm not a monster…well, that much of a monster. I didn't want to do it, but I owed him. They wanted to get the SAILOR project off the ground ASAP, and they needed fresh bodies."

"Why not get orphans or homeless people?" Amy asked. Mina shot her a look, but it was a question that had to be asked.

"They don't have the support structure of a family, at least in the formative years," Zhong replied, wiping his brow, which had been collecting sweat all of this time. "That's what Jadeite told me, anyway and if we hit a high school, we would scare the ever living shit out of the Japanese government and Nakanishi's contracts with the JSDF and domestic law enforcement would go up drastically."

"But you couldn't do it." Amy stared at the balding, pot-bellied man in front of her. He looked really scared, and that was a good thing. But then again, he was just somebody trying to get by as well. If that meant killing a few innocents, then…

"No…not to a thousand students."

"Only five," Mina snapped.

"Yeah…I knew that road was traveled by high school students, so I had Kim Yejun blow that place up."

"Better five than a thousand," Amy coldly said. But if she and Zhong had her positions swapped, she would have probably done the same thing. Maybe.

"I guess that was my reasoning," Zhong said, trying not to panic or show too much emotion. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, I'm sure that you are," Mina snarled at him. "You could have taken him on."

"Yes, let me, a middle-aged, financially insecure and dependent on Nakanishi for day-to-day living, go against my master's wishes because I have a conscience," Zhong replied, somewhat sarcastically. "Look what happened to me when I didn't do what I was asked to do."

Mina wanted to slap him, and made a move with her right hand, bringing it up in the air and making Zhong flinch.

Amy stopped her though, grabbing her hand in mid-air and shaking her head no. Mina glared at her, then at Zhong, but lowered her hand and Zhong relaxed.

Satisfied, Amy and Mina stopped interrogating him and left Zhong slumped in his chair, exhausted from the round of questioning. Amy pondered their next method of action, when suddenly, Mina saw something move.

"Amy…company."

Mina pointed to a video monitor on the side of the vault. It displayed the inside as well as the outside waiting area. Three men came up to the guard at the front of the vault and showed some IDs to him. Mina noted that it was the same three men from before, but dressed in business suits now. The guard responded, hitting the button to open the door to the safety deposit vault.

"Do you have your weapons?" Zhong asked nervously, still winded from his interrogation.

"Of course," Mina said, pulling out her Glock 26. Amy did the same.

"You might want to get to cover."

She gave the computer to Zhong, who cuddled it against his chest, and ducked down when Mina flipped over the desk, making a loud clang as it hit the ground. Amy did the same with the table, aiming her weapon toward the entrance.

The door swung open and one of the men charged in, a MP9 machine pistol at the ready.

Mina decked him with a double-tap, brains and blood spewing all over the polished floor and walls. The other two held back for a second, then rushed in as well armed with the same machine pistols as the first one. Amy fired first this time, three rounds in a tight group in the chest of the first man who rushed in. He slumped to the ground, dead.

The third man brought his weapon up and fired a burst at Mina, bullets whizzing by and hitting Zhong in the throat and riddling the computer with bullets. Mina fired back and killed him, with a shot to the head.

"Shit!" Amy rushed over to Zhong and placed her hand over his throat wound, but she knew that he was a goner. He clutched the computer, now useless, and it started to drop on the floor.

"Take…take the data…" he gurgled, spitting up blood. "Stop…stop…them." With that, the life faded from his eyes.

"No…" Amy looked at him, but there was nothing that she could do but take the flash drive she had dropped on the ground in the excitement of the battle. She put it in her purse, noticing that everything was stained with blood.

Mina meanwhile, had dashed up to the door and had kicked the weapon away from the guard who was waiting outside.

"Sorry," she said to him, and handcuffed him to the desk. "Hey!" she waved to Amy, motioning to her to come over.

"Pick up their weapons," she said to her. Amy complied, picking up two machine pistols on the ground and handing one to Mina.

"Thanks."

"Who are you guys?" the guard asked. He struggled against the handcuffs.

"Hey, none of your business," Mina said back. "Our quarrel is with the Nakanishi Group."

"But I work for their security company…" the guard said in protest.

Mina looked at Amy, who shrugged. "Well, just those guys." She gestured toward the three dead men on the ground. "You're not with those guys, right?"

The guard shook his head vigorously.

"That's what I thought. Have a nice day."

She and Amy ran toward the door on the opposite end of the lobby, which was just being opened up by the other guard in the lobby with the receptionist.

As he came in, Amy clobbered him in the face with her pistol and disarmed him while Mina ran out into the lobby and tackled the receptionist who was making a run for the elevators.

"Nice try," she said to her, dragging her back to the desk and handcuffing her to it with a pair thrown to her by Amy as she came walking out of the safe room.

"Amy, do your thing with the computer."

"On it." Amy didn't even have to ask for a password, she just simply cracked open the network using the terminal that the receptionist usually sat at.

"Maybe you should have locked this computer before you left," Amy dryly noted to the receptionist, who glared back. Amy proceeded to delete all information pertaining to Zhong (Han in the system), their information that had been collected on them earlier and everything else just to be sure. She then destroyed the retinal scanner and the fingerprinter with a hearty pistol-whip from her weapon.

"Okay, that should slow the local authorities down," Amy muttered to herself. There was no doubt in her mind that it would point back to them, but it would be traced to their aliases not the real person behind the disguise. Or so she hoped anyway.

"Are you ready?" Mina asked her.

"I'm all finished here," she replied, yanking the cords out from the tower CPU and putting a couple of rounds in the hard drive.

"Let's get out of here."

She and Amy headed toward the stairs, on the right of the bank of elevators knowing that the elevators would be locked down and monitored.

"I'm going to do a scan of the area," Amy said to Mina, pushing the stair doors open and running down the first flight. She tapped into the communications network of the building security.

"Damn," she said out loud.

"What's up?"  
"The police are waiting in the lobby and are clearing out the rest of the building."

"How the hell are we supposed to get by them looking like this?" Mina and Amy's clothes were stained with blood, and they were carrying several weapons on their person as well.

"I don't know." The two of them stopped on the fifth floor, re-assessing their options.

"Wait, there's another IFC building right across from this one," Amy said, checking a map of the area on her HUD. "And there's a hotel nearby as well."

"Okay, but how does that help us?"

"How was your Cantonese again?"

Mina glared at her. "This is payback for earlier, isn't it?"

Amy smirked at Mina's irritation. "You bet it is. I'm going to place a couple of calls to the emergency services. You are going to play the role of a distressed tourist or something like that."

"But I don't have to speak Cantonese for that."

"You don't. But the emergency service people do."

"Oh great. Fine, just do it."

Amy pulled out a burner mobile phone and dialed the emergency service number(112). She handed it to Mina, who continued to glare at her.

"Emergency Services, fire, police, ambulance?"

"Uh...uh…yeah…police, we need the police here?" Mina used her British English to make it sound like she was a tourist.

"Calm down ma'am, where is your location?" The operator immediately switched to English as well.

The phone didn't have the ubiquitous GPS locator on it for emergency services to triangulate the call, so they had to rely on the person knowing where they were at the moment.

"I'm at the…the…" Mina looked at Amy for some guidance.

"Four Seasons Hotel."

"I'm staying at the Four Seasons Hotel, somebody is shooting in here!" Mina was trying to act panicky, like any good foreign tourist, but her training was counteracting all of that.

"Are you sure?" the operator sounded suspicious of that.

"Goddammit, yeah I'm sure!"

"Where exactly are you in the hotel?"

"I'm in the lobby, please hurry, they're coming!" With that, she terminated the phone call.

"Nice. I'm punching up into their communications…now."

"Unit 663, respond to possible shooting in progress." Despite what the operator thought, it was still prudent to maintain the safety of the people nearby. "Unknown shooter, at the Four Seasons Hotel."

"What about the IFC?"

"Unit 124 and 105 will cover the IFC Tower I and Unit 104 and 125 will cover the IFC Tower II. SDU are on the way, ETA ten minutes."

"Who are the SDU?" Mina asked Amy.

"They're the SWAT team."

"Oh. Then we'd better move."

"Alright, here's the second part," Amy said to Mina.

"Wait, what?"

"I lied about you not having to speak Cantonese. You're going to be the operator!"

"Shit."

Down in the lobby, Officer 124 and 105 were escorting civilians out of the area when they got a call over their radio.

"124, 124, come in over."

124 looked down at the radio on his tactical vest. The operator sounded a bit different than before.

"This is 124, over."

"New orders, clear out of there and wait for the SDU team to arrive."

124 didn't like those orders, but whatever. "Roger. We're moving out." He motioned to 105, and they escorted the last of the civilians out of the building.

A couple of seconds later, 124 saw a couple of women stagger out, covered in blood.

"Hey!" He ran over to them and helped them stagger out of the lobby.

"Uh…hi," one of the women said back in English. She had nice blonde hair. The other one had…blue hair?

"What happened?" 124 asked them. Like most people in HK, he could understand English pretty well.

"We came from the eighth floor," she said to him. "It's a massacre over there."

"Are you hurt?" 124 made a move to inspect the women more closely (to check for injuries, of course), but the blonde woman pulled back.

"NO!" she shouted. "I mean…no, we're fine." 124 was taken slightly aback, but he had been in situations like this before.

"Alright, there's some ambulances over there, on the road." He pointed to a bunch of flashing lights and ambulances over by the main road passing by the IFC. "But stick around, we need to take your statement later."

"Okay, thanks." The two women dashed off, running toward the ambulances. 124 radioed the operator that there was possible massacre on the eighth floor of the building.

"I'm awaiting the SDU outside of the IFC Tower I," he said.

"124, your orders were to stay inside IFC Tower I and escort any civilians outside," the operator responded.

"That's a negative," 124 said back to the operator. "I was given orders to evacuate outside and wait for the SDU."

"Uh…I gave no such order." The operator was really confused right now. "Hey!" she yelled to the other people in the control room. "Did anyone give orders to have the police units clear out of IFC Tower I?"

While there was confusion in the police communications department, Mina and Amy were safely hi-tailing it out of there, back to their hotel across Victoria Harbor.

"Are you two alright?" the taxi driver asked them as they drove under the tunnel connecting the two parts of Hong Kong together.

"We're fine," Mina reassured him. "It was a costume party that got out of hand. If it makes you feel any better, we can pay you more."

"Oh, I was just wondering." Extra money was always appreciated.

Thirty minutes of strange looks, convincing the concierge not to call the police (with a help of some more money), and a change of clothes later, Amy called into Artemis, who was eating cheese puffs behind his computer monitor.

"Hey," he replied casually. "What's up?" He had been told not to pay attention too closely to Amy and Mina's excursion, which was totally fine with him.

"We got something big," she said over the secure network that had been set up earlier. "You'll want to hear this."

"What is it?"

"Just watch. Get Luna in there as well." Amy plugged the flash drive into her USB port on her tablet computer, then remote-accessed it to her HUD and sent it back to Luna and Artemis.

A couple of minutes of streaming data later, Luna and Artemis were staring aghast at the damming implications of the Nakanishi Group had in store for the world.

"This is unbelievable," Luna muttered.

"Tell me about it," Amy said. She looked over at Mina, who was painting her nails whilst lying down on one of the beds in the hotel room. "Is it true about us becoming zombies though?"

Luna and Artemis sighed. "Not really," Luna replied. "That was based on some estimates done earlier this year and they've been disproven. But there are significant mental drawbacks to using the microchips implanted in your brain."

Amy was way ahead of her on that one. "Like, mood swings, irritability, depression, minor brain damage, and things like that?"

"You bet," Luna said. She was looking at a list of symptoms that had been brought up by Dr. Kawasaki. "You hit all the major ones. But he wanted to do more surgery on you guys when you came back from the Sudan."

"Is he getting orders from Nakanishi?" Amy really wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes there.

"Some suggestions, but that's about all. They've been really trying to get Kobayashi off of the team as of late."

"Well, we can deal with all of that later then." Despite her curiosity, there was a pressing situation at hand that really needed to be resolved. "I need you to book me a flight to America."

"Uh…where in America?" Artemis asked.

Amy facepalmed herself and was reminded that America was not one, solid monolithic institution. Just like the rest of the world.

"They were mentioning something about these Representatives in Congress. Something about how they were making trouble and how they were being handled."

Artemis rewound the conversation to the part about the congressmembers. "Representative Clemens and Representative O'Conner." He did a database search on them. "Full names are Georgia Clemens from…Georgia and Charles O'Conner from Illinois. They serve on some subcommittees in Congress; they're pretty minor in terms of importance, but O'Conner still has powerful connections in the government."

"I've got some other stuff as well," Luna butted in. "I've checked the travel itinerary for Clemens, she's going to be back in her home constituency before heading back to Congress to listen to the president give a speech before a session of Congress."

"And where would that be?"

"She's holding a meet and greet with her constituency at a library in Atlanta, Georgia."

"Alright, that's where we need to go. Alert the other SAILOR members because we are going to stop this thing before it causes serious damage."

"Affirmative," Luna said. "But what about Col. Iwasaki? And the others?"

"I think Col. Iwasaki is going to have to be put in isolation after he suffered a major mental breakdown," Amy sardonically mentioned, checking the police networks to see if they were on them. There was still no mention of their handiwork at the IFC building.

"That's just what I was thinking," Artemis said. "I'll tell the medical staff here about his condition. I will also deploy the rest of the SAILOR team to take down the headquarters of Nakanishi in Tokyo."

"Very good then. Luna, make sure that Kobayashi and the others know the full extent of this operation, we will not let Nakanishi crush the rest of the world underfoot."

"Why do you need to go to America?" Artemis asked. "Couldn't you just send it to the Representatives and leave it at that?"

"That's a negative," Amy replied. "From what it sounded like, they been in trouble with Nakanishi and besides, we need to find those nuclear weapons that they've hidden in the United States. They might have information that they won't or cannot give to the local authorities. We have to talk to them in person and make sure that nothing happens to them."

"I have that," Luna said. She finished booking the flights (first class too!) and relayed the information to Amy and Mina (who was still painting her nails). "Alright, I have you booked for a flight to LAX at 0045 on Cathay Pacific, then to Hartsfield–Jackson on Delta Airlines at 1645. From there, I think you can figure it out."

"Got it." Amy started packing up. "Thanks guys. Looks like we have a plan in motion."

"Good luck," Artemis said to them.

"Thanks. We'll need it." With that, she terminated the conversation.

"Sounds like we're going to America," Mina commented, finishing her nails.

"Yep, we're heading over there." Amy wondered what America was like; she had never been over unlike Mina.

"Eh," Mina replied when Amy asked her how America was like. "It's…hard to describe. I'll let you be the judge of that."

"You're real helpful," Amy complained, shoving some more clothes in her suitcase. "Can we purchase weapons over there?"

"Can you? More like, we are going to, if we even think about taking on some of those Nakanishi guys," Mina said, putting away the Glock 26 in a special container that allowed it to be bypassed by security. And if someone opened it, they would have to have a nice long talk with the Japanese Consulate in not to open secure diplomatic packages.

"Don't we have to pass a background check or something?"

"That's why we have aliases, Amy." Mina rolled her eyes at her. "Come on, I thought you were smarter than this."

"Jeez, sorry for not knowing every little fact ever," Amy replied.

"No worries…my lover." Mina puckered her cheeks up and pretended to give her a kiss again.

"Mina, cut that out," Amy groaned, backing away. That was still a very uncomfortable experience. "And don't ever pull that stunt again."

"Don't be such a killjoy," Mina replied, retreating from Amy. She was still smiling at Amy's discomfort. "It's all part of the mission." Mina knew better though. That kiss…

"Uh-huh. Right…" Amy walked away from her, continuing to pack up.

The two of them finished packing and checked out of the hotel, rushing to the airport because Luna had set up the flight only a couple of hours from now and they had to be in the terminal two hours beforehand. But they made it, and were sitting comfortably in first-class on Cathay (woohoo!) and had fallen asleep with a nice glass of champagne.

* * *

By the time the police had put the pieces together concerning the murders in the IFC towers, they had to worry about a much, much larger problem than a couple of random murders in a high-class bank.


	36. Chapter XXXIV: Be thou, my vision

**Chapter XXXIV: Be thou, my vision.**

**1020hrs, 15 December 2013, East Point Library, Atlanta, Georgia, United States**

_"There's a wonderful phrase: 'the fog of war.' What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily." Robert McNamara_

* * *

"Representative Clemens, thank you for coming out here to our annual Christmas book drive!"

The head librarian of the East Point Library in, well, East Point, Georgia had kindly asked Georgia to come and give a small speech to the children and their families prior to Christmas. And with election season rolling around again (you could never think too early for election season, O'Conner had advised her), this would score major brownie points with the voters. Or she thought anyway.

"Thank you Ms. Roberts," Georgia said politely. There was a moderate crowd of people inside the auditorium, with their kids braving the cold weather to get here. "As your representative, I support educational endeavors such as these, and encourage others to do so as well. I have personally lobbied for thousands of dollars in educational funds to be directed here…"

There were some boos and hisses in the crowd. Georgia smiled and carried on, but inside she was deeply saddened by the reactions she was getting.

"…and for the betterment of this community. I will not tolerate any cuts in the budget for education here, nor will I allow any…"

"Tell that to my kid!" a heckler roared out in the crowd. "Our school got closed down because you allowed that Japanese company to come in here and take over everything!"

"Yeah!" another added. "You're a sellout to them!"

More boos and jeers followed. Georgia continued her speech, but at this point, it was hopeless. Most of the crowd left in disgust, and there were only a couple of dozen people of supporters left after it was all said and done. Most of them were old as well. Of course, the elderly citizens' vote was critical because…well, they actually voted.

"Thank you…" she said to one elderly lady who had come up to her and shook her hand. The room was nearly empty at this point, except for two young women who had been waiting patiently in the back for their turn to speak with her. They were wearing glasses, jeans and hoodies, but with the hoods down at the moment.

"Hi, Representative Clemens?" one of them asked. She was a gorgeous blonde, a slim figure, and with warm, friendly eyes. "We'd like to have a word with you."

"Well, that's why I'm here," Georgia replied. They didn't seem from her constituency though; it was a mostly African-American district around here. Perhaps she was wrong though. Whoever she was, her English was impeccable, with a slight Received Pronunciation accent.

"Is there someplace else we can talk?" the blonde asked.

Red flags started popping up all over Georgia's head. "Okay, I've been through this, and I don't want your Nakanishi folks around here anymore, just…just leave me alone for a couple of weeks, alright?"

"Ma'am…" The second woman spoke up now, but she was softer in tone than the blonde…and had blue hair.

"Is your hair actually like that?" Georgia asked before realizing that was probably not the best question to be asking right at this moment.

"Uh, heh," the blue-haired woman replied. "Long story. But we're not with the Nakanishi Group. We're with the Japanese government."

Georgia looked at them suspiciously. "The Japanese government, hmm?"

Mina, sensing some indecision, decided to bluff her way into getting her to talk.

"We know of the incidents that you've had with the Nakanishi Group," she said, trying to stay calm on the inside.

Georgia's eyes widened at that.

"You mean…you know about the shooting? And the computers?"

Mina nodded, even though she had no idea what the hell she was talking about. "We have something else…that proof that Nakanishi is up to something."

"Well, what is it?"

Amy and Mina looked at her. "Oh right, somewhere else. Come to my car."

She walked out to her vehicle in the parking lot, a Dodge Durango, a choice she was quickly regretting due to the high gas prices.

"Hold up." The blue haired one touched something on the glasses she was wearing, and looked at the vehicle for a second. "It's bugged."

"Yeah, what else is new?" She'd known that for months, but every time she had the bugs removed, they somehow popped back up.

"I'm going to disable them, hold on." She stood there for a couple more seconds, then nodded to Georgia. "We're all clear here."

"Okay...whatever you say." These two were some of the weirder people that she had dealt with, but then again, it was so much better than those three lobbyists she had to deal with all the time. Georgia unlocked the doors to her SUV and climbed into the driver's seat, but not before the blonde lady had stood in front of the door.

"Uh…what are doing? Are you planning on driving or something?"

"Oh. No, of course. Sorry, I got confused."

"Right…" It was official, these two were nuts. Then why was she spending time talking to them?

"So, what do you have?" Georgia said, after they were inside the car.

"I have this," the blue-haired one said. She pulled out a tablet computer and powered it up. After a couple of seconds, she played a video file for her.

"Um, no offense," she said to them after a couple of seconds had passed. "But I don't speak whatever their speaking on that video."

"Oh…sorry," the blonde said. "They're speaking in Japanese."

"What are they saying then?"

"They're quite simply, talking about how they are going to take over the world."

Georgia looked at them. Then she started laughing.

"Okay, now this has reached levels of crazy I haven't seen in years," she laughed.

"But you must know something is up with Nakanishi," the blue-haired person replied, quite stoically. "This video was taken at their HQ in Tokyo, and these are all the officers in charge of Nakanishi's overseas operations."

"Who's the woman then?" Georgia said, still unbelieving of their story.

"She's Beryl, the assistant to Ichigo Yamada, the CEO of the Nakanishi Group," blue-hair said to her.

"So, why is a personal assistant running the show then?"

Blue-haired kept explaining. "Yamada is a cokehead, and it's a well-known fact that all he cares about is getting paid. So if he leaves the business up to Beryl, then the entire better. But she's been using her power to mastermind a series of terrorist attacks that will occur tomorrow at 1730…"

"Seventeen what?"

"Five-thirty," the blonde one said.

"What's going on tomorrow in D.C?" blue hair asked her.

"There's going to be a session of Congress and the president is going to address the nation at…" Georgia trailed off on that one.

"Five-thirty?" the blonde one asked.

"Yeah…yeah, that's correct. So, where are these 'terrorist' attacks going to occur?" Georgia asked. She turned the heat up a little bit to make it warmer.

"There's going to be major terrorist attacks all over the United States, and I'm afraid that there's nothing we can do about those. The one we should be worried about it that they're going to detonate two nuclear weapons in Washington D.C and New York City."

That got her attention.

"Wait, there's nukes in the country?!" Georgia felt her heart in her throat now.

"Yeah, but the thing is…"

Georgia looked at the blue-haired one, but let her continue. This was certainly getting very interesting.

"…I can't figure out where they would store such a weapon without drawing too much attention."

Her eyes widened some more.

"I think I know where they're keeping that nuke then."

"Where?!" The two of them said at the same time.

Georgia was slowly coming around to the information that the two had given her. And with WMDs in play, the stakes had increased significantly.

"It's where we got shot at…wait at second, aren't you supposed to know that already?"

The blonde one shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry…we're aware of the incidents…but not what they were. So can you tell us about where you got shot at?"

Georgia glared at her, annoyed by her lie but saw no other choice than to go on. "Me and Charles…you do know who Charles is…right?"

Blue-hair nodded. "Representative Charles O'Conner, from Illinois." She butchered the Illinois part, pronouncing it "Eee-rah-noise."

That satisfied her curiosity for now. "Me and Charles went to this meat processing plant in Orange, Virginia. We were shot at by some people there, and then some representatives from the Nakanishi Group were at our offices to greet us, and basically blackmailed us into silence."

"So, they had something to hide there then," blue haired said to her, poking at her tablet computer some more in the backseat. "And whatever they wanted, they wanted you out of it. But killing two US Representatives would have attracted too much attention, so they used…what was it they used against you?"

"Long story. But then, it gets even better. A couple months later, I get an email from this guy who works tech support…"

"A tech support guy?" Blonde asked. "Did you get his name?"

"No, but he sent me an email telling me that Nakanishi was tracking my movements, and that he wanted to let me know because he thought it was wrong for them to do so. He sent some information over, and Charles got in contact with some of his higher up friends, but they got to them first, and destroyed my computer remotely."

"Damn." Blue-haired looked at Blonde. "That corroborates what Sudhir told us in Bangalore."

"Wait, you met the guy?"

"And then some," Blonde replied. "We got into a massive firefight in Bangalore trying to get to the proof that you have here."

"Alright, then," Blonde told Georgia. "Do you believe us now?"

Georgia looked at both of them, still very skeptical, but she wasn't going to pass up an opportunity like this. This was the third and last chance they had to get back at the plague that was Nakanishi, but also to prevent a massive nationwide tragedy as well.

"One last thing," Georgia asked them.

"Yeah?"

"What's yall's names?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," blonde said apologetically. "I'm Mina. This is Amy."

"Thank you for listening to our story," Amy said, bowing politely (well, as much as could be done in a SUV seat).

"No problem. So what's your plan?" This was starting to come together, and even if she had only known these two women for a couple of minutes, she finally trusted them.

"We need to get to Orange," Mina said. "But we also need to alert the authorities about this as well. Since you have the influence, perhaps you should fly up to Washington, get your compatriots together and tell the president."

"What about the nuke in New York?" Losing either city would be disastrous, but if they could only save one…

"We don't know where that it. Maybe we if we raid the meat processing plant, we can find something about the data there."

"Okay, I'll fly up to D.C, with a copy of that information you have there," Georgia said, getting a flash drive from out of her purse. Ironically, it was from one of the Nakanishi lobbyists, who had given it to her randomly after some "meeting" they had with her.

"Got it." Amy copied it over, and handed it back to her. "We'll try to meet you in D.C, after we take out the nuclear weapon threat. Are you going to be okay, or do you want one of us to go with you, you know, as an escort?"  
Georgia wondered what division of the Japanese government that these two operated under, but after all of what she had seen and been through, she thought it best not to ask too many questions.

"No, I'll be fine. Just watch out when you get into D.C, Nakanishi replaced part of the Capitol Police there a couple of months ago, and so they might have it in for you."  
"Thanks for that," Mina said, fiddling with her hair. "Also…do you know where a gun store is?"

That was something, for some reason, did not surprise Georgia. "Yeah…there's one right by the airport over there."

"Do you mind if we take your car?" Amy asked her. "For the mission? We'll be careful with it."

"Ah…" Now Georgia was really reluctant on that one. But with high gas prices…if it got "accidentally" destroyed, which it more than likely would, she could collect the insurance money and get a better car.

"Yeah, sure, why not? Can you give me some money for the flight in return? You know, with all that government connections you have?"

"Sure." Mina handed her a wad of $100s.

"Wow. You sure you're not a drug dealer or something?" Georgia joked, but that was an all too common sight around here, especially when she was growing up.

"I'm quite sure, yes." Mina smiled at her, reassuringly.

"Okay then," Amy said, tapping the directions to Orange, VA on her computer. "It'll take us about nine hours to get there, so we're cutting it real close."

"Not if I'm driving," Mina said. She was eager to try out driving here in America.

"I can't wait," Amy replied sarcastically. "Ms. Georgia?"

"It's Representative Clemens, actually, but you can call be Georgia." It was a common mistake, but having those Nakanishi folks around and constantly make that one simple mistake had her a bit on edge.

"Of course. Georgia, can you take us to that gun store?" Amy tapped on her computer to make sure what weapons they might need for the upcoming mission.

* * *

At Ranger Gun Store, on the intersection of Highway 75 and 285, Joe Hitchens was reading some…gentleman's literature, and in general, enjoying his day. It hadn't been a busy one, but he had gotten some sweet sales already when some of those militia people came in and bought some more assault rifles and ammo.

The store itself wasn't too interesting, lined with guns on all sides, decorated with American flags, a "Don't Tread on Me," flag, and a Dixie flag (the battle one, not the stars and bars). And of course, there was the sarcastic sign on the cash register that said "We don't call 911."

The bell on the door rang, and he looked up to see three women come into the store, one black, two kind of pasty looking ones with blonde hair and…blue hair? The two other women were wearing hoodies and sunglasses as well, partially disguising their identities but Joe didn't really care all that much. Just don't rob his store, and everything would be fine.

"Morning Representative," he said to the black lady. He was very up to date on politics, especially gun politics in the United States; he approved of his Rep's stance on the issue of gun ownership. "What can I do you for?"

"Well…" she began, but Mina cut her off.

"What kind of assault rifles do you carry?"

Joe pointed to the back shelf behind him. There were shotguns, hunting rifles, assault rifles, large-caliber rifles, .22 rimfire rifles…

"How about this Bushmaster AR-15 here?" He took the M16 derivative off of the shelf. "It's their Superlight ones, weighs only seven pounds, thirty round magazine, with .223 rounds." It was without rails or any other accessories, but it would get the job done fair enough.

"Sounds good," she replied, taking the rifle from him and pointing it up into the air. The iron sight was a little bit off, but she could adjust that on the way there. Hopefully.

"What else do you have?" Amy asked him. He looked like a hick, complete with mullet, stubble, a slight pot-belly, and some crooked teeth to boot. But far from being the stereotypical redneck, he was probably very well educated and smart; you had to know your stuff when dealing with guns. Otherwise, you didn't live very long.

"I've got this Ruger Mini-14," Joe replied. Pulling the gun off of the shelf, it had a passing resemblance to the old M14 rifle that the Army used during Vietnam before they switched to the M16A1. It had a wooden buttstock and furniture, along with a thirty round magazine, with semi-auto fire.

"Eh, I don't like that one," she said, feeling the weight of the gun and the bulkiness in her small hands. "Got something lighter than that?"

"Yeah, I've got this Beretta Cx4 Storm here." It looked like an assault rifle, but it wasn't, only chambered to fire pistol bullets and the like. It was actually used on Battlestar Galactica, in fact due to its futuristic look.

"Looks good. I'll take it." Amy picked up that weapon and again, looked through the sight and felt its weight. Perfect.

"I've got a special going on," Joe piped in, always the consummate businessman. "You buy those two rifles, I'll give you half off on ammunition and two pistols to go along with it."

"Sure." Mina looked along the display cases at the assortment of pistols there. They already had pistols, but you never know…

"What about this revolver here?" She pointed to a rather large revolver on the bottom shelf of the display case.

"That monstrosity?" Joe scoffed at the people who were always were interested in it. "That Smith and Wesson Model 500 fires a massive .500 caliber round. You won't want that thing unless you're fighting baldricks or something like that, heh. And even if you were, it would knock you flat on your ass."

"Baldricks?" Mina looked at him curiously.

"Nevermind. Perhaps this weapon would be better for y'all." He pulled out a couple of Colt Pythons, chambered for the self-defense standard, the .38 Special round. Amy felt the revolver in her hand, opening the chamber and inspecting the cylinder. Mina did the same with a similar revolver. She nodded her approval.

"Yeah, that'll do," she said confidently. "I'll take two of those, with 120 rounds each of .38 Special, 500 rounds of .223, and…what does the Cx4 Storm take?"

"This one? .40 S&W."

"300 rounds of .40 S&W. Oh, and as many magazines that you have for each of those guns."

"Okay…I'm going to have to call in a background check, and some ID as well." It was standard procedure for this type of purchase; actually for any type of gun purchase. He was also slightly suspicious of the amount of ammunition they were buying as well, but hey, it was actually a common occurrence down here in the South. "Just to let y'all know, these weapons have all be tested and a ready to go," he stated proudly. "You folks seem like you know what you're doing, so a little bit of maintenance and elbow grease, and these guns will be ready to go."

"Thanks for that."

Georgia looked nervously at those two, but of course, they had Georgia driver's licenses that could be confirmed by the ATF check, due to Amy cracking the system and putting themselves in there (under an alias, of course). The ATF and the FBI would later "overlook" these transgressions due to the nature of their operation.

The background check took a little bit, but they were cleared and they paid for the weapons, which cost about $6000 in total. In addition, she paid for some winter boots, some heavy duty coats, two KA-Bar knives, two tactical vests and some jerky, which came to another $1000. Mina paid with a credit card that would lead to a proxy account in the Caymans, and they left the store both happy with their purchase. Joe was also pretty psyched as well; more money for him. Perhaps he would close up early today and go to the bar.

Georgia was still confused at how that happened, and made a note to have a talk with some of the state legislators about the gun laws down here.

"We'll drop you off at the airport, okay?" Mina was now driving the Durango, with Amy in the front seat and Georgia in the back, uncomfortably sitting with all of the weapons that the two had purchased.

"That'll be nice," she said.

The airport was a scant five minutes away, and they dropped Georgia in front of the departures area.

"Good luck you two," she said, getting out of the car. "I'll get this information to my friends, and hopefully, we can stop this."

"Where should we meet you?" Mina asked her.

"Meet me at my apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. We can work out a plan there." She scribbled down an address and handed it to Amy.

"Thanks," Amy said. Georgia nodded in reply.

With that, she exited the car, rushing off to the nearest airline booth that had any available flights. Mina stepped on the accelerator and pulled out of the departures lane, and sped toward the highway, following Amy's directions toward Orange, Virginia.

* * *

Nephrite was on his cell phone in the Dulles Airport, waiting for his baggage to come around on the carousel.

"Pick up…please, pick up." The phone continued to ring as he watched the baggage come of onto the carousel.

"Hello?" A female's voice on the other line answered.

"Molly, Molly, is that you?" Nephrite felt relieved when she picked up the phone.

"Yeah, of course it's me, how are you Maxfield?" She was very excited to hear from him; perhaps they would go for a nice night on the town, see the sights and all the Christmas decorations up.

"Molly, I don't have a lot of time, but there is something that you need to do for me."

"Of course, Max, anything for you."

Nephrite took a deep breath, knowing what he was about to do was completely against what he had prepared himself for.

"I need you to get out of D.C today."

"What…?" Molly didn't like the tone that Nephrite said that in. She gripped the phone tighter.

"Go to our special place out in the country. You know, by Gettysburg?"

"Yeah…but why? It's really cold out there at this time." That cabin was scary sometimes, even with Nephrite. But now? When it was dark and cold? No offense to Gettysburg, but it was only a small town, nothing like the big city and not quant at all like Alexandria.

"Just…there's going to be a lot of bad stuff happening tomorrow," he said, trying to wipe off his sweaty hands. He saw his bag come down the carousel, and he picked it up, grunting as he did so.

"You okay there, Max?" Molly asked. Why was he sounding so anxious? This was completely not like him.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, just getting my luggage. But please, there's something really bad going down tomorrow, and you shouldn't be anywhere near D.C, okay?"

"Uh…okay, Max. I believe you."

"I'll meet you there on the 19th, and we can have a good holiday there, alright?"

"That sounds good then," Molly replied, even though it didn't. "I'll see you then."

"Bye…"

"Bye."

Nephrite hung up the phone, and hoped to God that she would heed his advice. If not, he had just condemned his girlfriend to death. He pushed those thoughts to the side for now though, and walked out to the arrivals area, where there was a company van waiting for him.


	37. Chapter XXXV: Empty Quiver

**Chapter XXXV: Empty Quiver**

**0030hrs, 16 December 2013, Orange, Virginia, United States.**

_"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin._

* * *

"How is everything back home?"

Mina and Amy were sitting in the car, examining the processing plant through a pair of binoculars. The heat was turned up, of course, and they were observing comfortably the movements of the people in the facility. They were parked significantly further back than where Representative Clemens and O'Conner had parked while observing the facility. If they were going in, they were going to do this right and use violence of action to surprise those inside.

"They took care of Iwasaki," Amy said with a smile. "Luna said you should have seen the look on his face when Lita tackled him in the hallway and held him down so that Serena could administer the sedative."

"Did they get it on tape?" Mina smirked. She looked at the facility through her eyepiece HUD, her night vision picking up several people moving in the buildings and around the perimeter.

"Yep. But they're not doing to send it over now," Amy replied. "We've got more important things to do. Luna said that she and Artemis were going offline to take care of the Nakanishi HQ, so we're on our own for a bit."

"Of course." Mina continued to scan the area, picking out different targets as she went. "I have five guys on the perimeter, armed with pistols and hunting rifles."

"Not too bad of a fight," Amy said, taking down some notes on her computer. "I'm switching to infrared."

Amy switched her HUD over to the infrared view, and scanned for more targets.

"Looks like we have ten more guys inside the processing plant, armed with assault rifles and shotguns. That's probably where the nuclear weapon is located." She continued to look around. "And ten or so guys inside the office building over there as well, also armed with assault rifles and shotguns."

Mina frowned at that statement. "Okay, that's going to be more of a challenge. What's the best route into this place?"

"That's the problem," Amy said. She brought up a satellite image of the plant. "It's completely flat on all sides, and completely exposed as well. There's no stealthy approach unless we can crawl or do something like that."

"Shit. What about the approach to the plant?"

Amy focused in on the entrance. "It's a gravel road, with a chain link fence and a gate at the entrance." Mina continued to look around at the facility, examining the entrance, the sides of the plant, and the surrounding forest. Finally, she spotted a weakness.

"Okay, do you see this piece of forest on the east side of the plant?" she said, pointing to the right side of the facility.

"Yeah, I see it there. It looks closer to the place than everywhere else. There's not too much in the way of fencing there as well. It only looks like a small wood fence on that side."

Mina nodded at Amy's observation.

"Here's my plan. I drive up to the entrance, and cause a huge commotion, get everyone's attention."

"Right…" Amy could see where this was going though. "And I slip in behind and start taking people out from the rear."

"Precisely."

"But I only have this short carbine that fires pistol bullets," Amy noted. Maybe not getting that weapon was a bad idea.

"Well, you should have gone with the Mini-Ruger," Mina replied, somewhat sarcastically. "I'm just kidding," she said with a smile, sensing Amy's irritation at that last statement. "We can switch weapons, I'll be fine here…"

Amy shot down that statement though. If not getting a more powerful weapon was her fault, she wasn't going to let someone else pay for it.

"No, you'll be going up against more opposition than I will, without the advantage of surprise. I'll be just fine with what I have."

"Okay then." Mina looked up at the plant again and make sure that she had accounted for everyone. "I'll drop you off when we approach from the south, here," she said, pointing at a cluster of woods that surrounded the plant. "And I'll continue my route until I enter the plant. When you hear lots of shooting…"

"That's my cue to start," Amy said. "I got it. We need to secure the facility fast or else the police will be all over us, and I don't want to have to explain to the local authorities why we took out everyone here. Five minutes, tops. It'll take the police ten minutes to respond at the minimum, since this is a rural area."

Mina nodded at Amy's statement. "You got it. What time should we start this?" she asked.

"I observed that they change the guard out every two hours or so. At about 0200, we should commence the operation. Plus, they'll be more tired as the night wears on."

"Fine. Do you want to get some sleep or something…?" Mina looked at Amy, partly out of the necessity of the question; they had been driving for about seven hours straight (thanks to Mina's speeding) and another couple observing the place. But she was concerned as well. Amy looked disturbed and sometimes, even frail. The past couple of months had aged them beyond all belief, and Mina knew it. The other three in the group had completely fallen apart, only held together by drugs and some major counseling, but she and Amy had managed to keep it together somehow.

"Yeah…I could do with a bit of shuteye," Amy yawned, not knowing what Mina was thinking. "I can get up in about thirty minutes and wake…"

"No, no, you go ahead," Mina said, waving her off her hand. "It's okay. Sleep."

"Whatever you say." Amy reclined her chair back, and closed her eyes. She was asleep within a minute.

For the next hour or so, Mina looked out at the facility, still keeping tabs on everyone there, but occasionally, she stole a look at Amy laying there in the passenger's seat. She looked so cute, with her blue hair, her short but slim figure, her small bust…

Mina shook that from her head. "Gotta stay focused," she mumbled to herself, putting the binoculars to her eyes once more time to do another sweep of the area.

But she couldn't stay focused for long. Mina stole another look at her. Amy breathed in, her chest heaving slightly upward, then coming back down as she exhaled.

"You're so beautiful," Mina said to her softly. "I know you don't feel the way that I do toward you, but that's okay. Some things…some things were never meant to be."

She leaned over and kissed Amy on the forehead, very gently. "Thanks for everything." Mina leaned back and wiped away a couple of tears that came to her eyes. "I hope we make it through all this," she sniffed.

Amy stirred, forcing Mina to get back to watching the facility.

"Mmm…Mina…?" she asked, very sleepily.

"Yeah?"

"I felt something warm…was that you?"

"Sorry, I was trying to get something," Mina cheerfully replied, her heart thumping in her chest.

"Oh, okay. How much longer?"

"Uh…" Mina checked her HUD. "It's 0130 now. We should start getting ready for this."

"Alright." Amy reclined the chair back up. "I really needed that. Thanks for letting me sleep like that."

"No problem," Mina said.

"You've been a great person to work with," she smiled weakly at Mina. "Trying to take care of Lita or Raye is difficult, but Serena…"

"Heh, that would be a real pain in the ass," Mina replied, loading a magazine with a stripper clip of .223 rounds, pushing them down. "Did you get all of your magazines loaded on the drive up?"

"Yep." Amy pulled the Cx4 Storm from the backseat and checked it, retracting the charging handle and looking down the barrel. "I hope that this holds up in the cold weather."

"It should." Mina checked that iron sight that had been somewhat loose back at the store. She had Amy fix that, and it was nice and straight now.

"Okay, I'll drop you off at the starting point."

"Let's get this done," Amy said. "A lot is riding on us."

"Tell me about it…" Mina put the car in drive and pulled out to the road, covered in snow and glistening in the moonlight. About five minutes later, she drove up to the drop off point, a small road leading toward the woods.

"Here's your spot," she said to Amy, smiling at her, her teeth almost matching the snow on the ground. "Good luck, SAILOR Mercury."

Amy smiled back. They hadn't used those in a little bit. "Thanks, SAILOR Venus." With that, Amy hopped out into the cold, closing the door behind her, patting on the door so that Mina knew to take off. The SUV drove away, leaving her standing in the picturesque landscape, holding her black carbine, dressed in winter clothes and a tactical vest. Her Glock was holster on her hip, and the extra Colt Python was strapped to her right leg, just in case. The Beretta Cx4 Storm glistened in the night air, as the moon shown down upon the pathetic Earth, with all of its petty squabbles, power plays and stupidity.

She watched as her breath misted in the frigid air, rising for a couple of inches and then disappearing.

"Alright," she said to herself. "This is it."

* * *

Amy walked along, following the path on her HUD as it guided her through the patch of woods in the distance. She made sure to keep low and to make as little noise as possible; with the foliage gone and with the air dry, noise could carry very, very far. Which is why they had to hit the place quickly and find the nuclear weapon before the police arrived.

Amy thought about Mina, ever since Hong Kong, she had been looking at her funny, trying to cheer her up, acting different that the almost comical Mina that they had come to know in high school and early on in the SAILOR program. And the kiss…well, Amy didn't like being played with like that, even if it was for the mission. She didn't swing that way anyhow. But maybe Mina…

She shook those thoughts from her head and continued on her path, the snow crunching beneath her feet.

Fifteen minutes of crouched walking later, she arrived at the jump off point. Going into a prone position, she scanned the area with her HUD, picking out different targets that popped up. Along the fence, there patrolled a single man, completely bored out of his mind and not paying attention at all. If he got close enough, she could probably take him out with the KA-Bar knife that had been previously purchased at the gun store. Amy brought up the time; it read 0155. Almost time to go.

The man turned around and started to walk along the fence, looking at the tree line instead of looking at the ground, where Amy was laying on her stomach. He came closer…ten meters…five meters…four…three…two…

She leapt up and stabbed him in the jugular, killing him in a few seconds. The man didn't even have time to cry out, only taking a final breath before collapsing to the ground, his blood staining the white snow.

"Now what do we have here…?" Amy said to herself. The man was also carrying a tactical vest, but had a Remington 700 hunting rifle with a detachable magazine. A quick check revealed it to be in the .308 Winchester caliber, and he was carrying about fifteen rounds on him. Not a lot, but then again, they weren't expecting much out here. More searching revealed a radio, a Ruger P95, and some family photos. Amy gulped upon seeing those; it took her back to her first interrogation. She quickly put them away and took the Remington 700, slinging the Cx4 on her back and taking the extra ammo for the hunting rifle with her.

"Mina…SAILOR Venus," she said over her own radio. "Are you in position?"

"Almost," Mina replied. She was driving up the road approaching the plant. "Get ready."

"Okay." Amy crawled forward, and sighted the rifle in on the facility. There were two more targets, one on top of the meat processing building, and one patrolling what seemed to be the offices of the place. The other two were by the gate, unaware of the fate of their comrade. Suddenly, they saw a SUV come driving down the road and made a right hand turn onto their gravel pathway, toward the gate, stopping at it. One of the men walked forward, suspicious of course, and flipped the safety off his Mossburg 500.

Mina rolled down her window. "Hey…um…" she started to say, but the guard cut her off.

"This is a private facility, Ma'am," he said. "Please turn around and leave this area at once."

"But, I'm really lost!" she protested.

"I'm sorry, but you have to leave." The guard brought up his shotgun to hip level, making sure that she got the message.

"Fine." Mina snapped up her Glock 26 and pulled the trigger, blasting a hole in the guard's head. He fell back, tumbling off of the road.

"What the…" the other guard said, but he had no time to react to Mina's vehicle, who barreled through the gate and ran over him, crushing his spine and neck.

"There's a problem at the front gate!" Amy heard over the radio. "All units, move in, move in!"

"Showtime." She aimed the rifle downrange and picked out the person standing on the roof. He was about 100 meters away, an easy target. She exhaled, then took a breath back in, then depressed the trigger sending the bullet into the chest of the man. He fell down, dead. The other guard meanwhile, was running toward the direction of Amy, bringing up his radio to report the sniper, but she had already retracted the bolt and chambered a new round firing it into his head and blowing it up, brains, skull and blood spraying everywhere. Predictably, his radio message never got out.

Five guards burst out from the office building on Amy's left, running toward Mina's SUV. Amy fired a shot, hitting the last one to come out of the door. The others didn't notice, as they were too preoccupied with shooting at Mina.

At this point, Mina had exited her vehicle and opened fire with her AR-15, squeezing off round after round at targets that presented themselves to her. She saw the man that Amy had shot go down.

"Mercury!" she yelled into her radio, ducking behind her car door reload. "Keep it up!"

"Will do!" was the reply. Amy jacked another round into the chamber and fired it off at some more men that were firing wildly at Mina. Another target went down, but that was the last of the ammo.

"I'm out!" Amy yelled to no one in particular. She unslung the Cx4 from her back and started to fire off more shots.

Mina had defeated most of the guards in front of her, and she moved up to the offices. Keeping her back to the wall, she started toward one of the doors. She started to open it, but a burst of gunfire caused her to snap her hand back.

"Damn. SAILOR Mercury, I need a thermal scan of the office, over!"

"Roger, standby." Amy scanned the office with her HUD, and several more targets popped up, hidden behind desks and tables.

"I see them," Venus muttered to herself. She kicked the halfway destroyed door open and snapped a shot off at a man crouching behind a desk. He went down.

Shifting her attention right, Mina dashed right and slid next to a desk, avoiding the gunfire from the rest of the guards in the room. Bullets whizzed by her, destroying phones, computers and causing the occasional stack of paper to be blown up in a spectacular fashion.

"I got this." Venus continued her assault, she rose up and fired off three more rounds at a target less than ten meters away from her. Another one went down.

"We can't stop them!" was the shout over the radio. Amy had effectively picked off everyone who had come outside, and now ten bodies lay on the ground just from both Mina and Amy's handiwork, excluding the five from before.

"They're in the offices! They're…!" The radio went dead after that. Amy assumed that Mina had gotten the job done in there.

"Mercury, I'm done in here," she said coolly.

"I can see that, Venus," Amy replied. "I'm moving up to the processing plant. I'll meet you there."

"Got it."

Amy got up from her position and ran forward toward the facility, breathing extremely hard. The adrenaline of the situation prevented her from feeling the cold and helped her blaze through the layer of snow that would have made it difficult to get over to the buildings. In about thirty seconds, she had crossed over to where Mina was standing by the entrance to the processing plant.

"Ready for this?" Mina asked her as she approached.

"I am. The nuclear weapon should be here…I hope."

The moderately large building loomed in front of them, giving a very creepy sensation as Amy did another thermal scan of the building.

"I have five more targets in the building. Looks like they're trying to move something." She kept looking around.

"They're all on the first floor of the plant. No one is on the catwalks and such."

"Then we can end this right now," Mina said, ejecting her magazine from the AR-15 and putting a fresh one in. "How far away are they?"

"Ten meters."

"Okay, when we go in, I'll take the three on the left, you take the two on the right."

"Alright then. Let's go. Oh, and make sure not to shoot at the thermonuclear device." Mina rolled her eyes at Amy, who cracked a slight smile.

Mercury and Venus took up positions by the door. Mina checked it to make sure that it was open. It was.

"On three." Venus said. "One. Two. Three."

Amy opened the door. Venus went in first, double tapping a guard on the far left. She noted that they were about to move a very heavy case into a truck. Well, they were going to move it, if she hadn't shot the other two people trying to move it.

Mercury went in after Venus, snapping a shot off at the guard in front of her, then double tapping another on the right.

In less than three seconds, all of the guards had been neutralized. In four minutes, the entire facility had been secured.

"Is…is that all?" Mina panted, the exertion of the event now just catching up to her.

"Yeah…yeah…that's it." Amy scanned around, but there was nothing to see. All targets had been eliminated. "I'm going to check the police radio."

There was nothing though. No calls…yet.

"We got real lucky on that one," Amy said, looking around at the carnage. "Let's make sure that it was worth it."

She and Mina walked over to the heavy case that the guards had been hefting towards a U-Haul truck. They knelt down next to it. Amy placed her hands over the latches, looked at Mina, took a deep breath and undid the latches. She then opened the case up.

There sat a nuclear warhead. Not a bomb, not a missile, but the actual warhead itself, the business end of what had spurred the Cold War on for so long.

"Is that it?" Mina asked anxiously. "It looks so small." She was right; the device only measured 31 inches in length and maybe 12 inches in diameter. It was coated in a white paint, coving up the steel casing that surrounded the small fissile material inside of it.

"Yeah. That's it." Amy did a search on what it could be. "It's American," she said, frowning at that. "The W80 nuclear warhead, variable yield, 5 to 150 kiloton explosive device…"

"Why hasn't it been reported missing?" Mina wondered. "You'd think that if they knew if something like this was missing, they'd throw a fit. Especially after Russia."

"I don't know." Amy stood up after finishing her analysis. "It looks like it has been modified for remote detonation."

"Wait, so someone could blow this thing up right now?!" Mina gulped. Being vaporized in a mushroom cloud was not her idea of going out with a bang.

"Possibly. I'm going to cut off the remote part."

"Uh…" Mina didn't like where this was going. "You know what you're doing?"

"Maybe."

"Dammit."

Amy knelt down again, this time pulling out her knife (still stained with blood) and looked for the remote transmitter that had popped up in her scan of the device. There was a small transmitter near one of the head of the weapon, and there were several jury-rigged wires leading into the warhead itself. Amy calculated that the bomb had only been set up for remote detonation, and so cutting the wires wouldn't lead to a massive hole in the ground where they were standing. Well, at least that's what the calculations said.

She took a breath in, and then snipped all the wires leading into the bomb. Nothing happened.

After a couple seconds of holding their breath in, Mina and Amy exhaled.

"Oh my god," Mina muttered. "That…that was unbelievable."

"Tell me about it," Amy replied. "Alright, let's look around for more intel on where the second bomb is located."

The two of them split up and started looking around the plant for anything on the second bomb.

Mina covered her nose at the smell of death that many slaughterhouses gave off; even though this one hadn't been used in years, it still had that smell. She was looking around on the first floor, but really wasn't coming up with anything.

"Amy, how's your search coming?" she yelled to her.

"Nothing so far." Amy was on the catwalks, which lead to a small office overhanging the plant. She walked toward it, her boots clanging on the forged steel that made up the catwalk. After a couple seconds of brisk walking, she arrived at the door and found it unlocked. Slowly, she pushed the door open, keeping her weapon at the ready.

The office was a mess, with several destroyed laptops lying about, presumably dismantled by the guards as they tried to leave. Chairs were flipped over, papers scattered everywhere, several shotguns and assorted shells lay about, and some AR15s were propped up against the wall.

Amy bent down and inspected one of the laptops. It was unsurprisingly, a Nakanishi T800, and it's screen was completely busted in. But the hard drive was still intact. Whoever tried to destroy it, didn't realize that destroying the screen didn't mean that the computer itself was destroyed. Amy picked it up and laid it on a desk, and hit the power button to turn it on. It did so, but without the screen giving the GUI input; thankfully, Amy could remote access the computer via her tablet computer by utilizing the MAC address that the computer gave off and routing a remote access command that way.

"What have we here…" she muttered to herself, looking at her computer. The internet browser predictably, had porn on it, but there was an email server open as well. She accessed it.

There, she found exactly what she was looking for; proof of the WMDs and the location of the second one.

"To: CMD at ORANGE.

Subject: Special package.

I trust that you will deliver the truck to the capitol on time. The catering service that we have provided for the government officials, coupled with our security services will be sufficient cover."

There was also a second email, concerning the location of the other WMD.

"Re: Special Package.

The second package, in case of secondary team neutralization and/or mission failure, is at Ana Meat Processing Plant in Paterson, New Jersey. I trust that this information will not be misused."

"Gotcha," she said. Amy made sure to save it on the small amount of HD space she carried on her computer. She then transferred that data to her eyepiece HUD and sent it to back to Luna.

But nothing happened.

"PC Load letter? The fuck?" Amy tapped her HUD again. It refreshed, and displayed the proper error message, saying that the data couldn't be transmitted. In fact, nothing on her HUD or tablet computer was working properly; it was completely scrambled.

"Amy…Amy!" Mina yelled from downstairs.

"I'm coming!" Amy ran outside the office and looked to see what was going on.

"Oh shit."

Fifteen Suburbans and Yukons were parked outside, and soldiers in white, winter fatigues, armed with MP5s, M4A1s, and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons were fanning out on the perimeter, surrounding the facility.

"Who…who are they?" Mina asked Amy, obviously a bit scared.

"I don't know…maybe they're the local SWAT team?" she said, but both of them knew that wasn't true at all. More than likely, it was a team from Nakanishi Security Solutions, the PMC that had been created to enforce Nakanishi's policies on its underlings.

"Mina, you still have those binoculars?"

"Yeah, I have them right here." Mina hustled herself up to the catwalk.

"Let me see those." Amy took the binoculars and looked at the gaggle of SUVs clustered on the road.

Out of all the white-clad soldiers, she saw someone stand out completely; he had long, brown hair, had a slightly pointed nose, and carried himself confidently. He was dressed in US Army ACUs, and was carrying a rare Calico M960 submachine gun, identifiable by the cylindrical magazine it had on the top of it and the general Sci-fi look that it possessed.

"Nephrite."


	38. Chapter XXXVI: Beeldenstorm

**Chapter XXXVI: Beeldenstorm**

**0630hrs, 16 December 2013, Orange, Virginia, United States**

_"Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces." Julius Caesar _

* * *

The standoff between Amy, Mina, and the Nakanishi Security Solutions PMC was now in its fourth hour. Neither side was willing to budge, and it was looking like that the PMC was going to make its move to attack. The PMC had made no attempt to negotiate at all; in fact, there had been no communication whatsoever between them and the SAILOR Team.

"They're getting ready," Amy said, looking out a window at the SUVs parked outside. From what she could see, one of the SUVs had a lot of jamming equipment poking out of it, making it look like a hedgehog.

"Why the hell would Nephrite be all way out here?" Mina wondered, checking an AR-15 magazine from upstairs. It was a twenty round one, instead of the thirty round one she had purchased earlier.

"This is a huge operation. He's here to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Which in this case, has."

"Not for long if they attack us. There's, what, seventy of them and two of us?"

"That's only 35 to 1," Amy commented sarcastically. "Not too bad of odds."

"Yeah, if we were playing Call of Duty or something like that," Mina scoffed putting the magazine away in a tactical vest pocket.

"You played CoD?" Amy asked her, somewhat disbelieving. Of course, this was coming from a person who had managed to get through Heavy Rain…

"I played every single one of them," she said to Amy, smiling. "My favorite is actually CoD2."

"Really now? What about Modern Warfare?"

A bullet snapped by their heads, shattering a window, pinging about the plant and putting an end to that conversation.

"Did you see it?!" Amy yelled, ducking down and trying to find the sniper that had fired off that shot.

"No, did you?"

Amy shook her head and looked around, taking stock of their situation. Both Amy and Mina were holed up in the processing plant, which had two entrances and a loading bay; the bay was blocked by a truck that was going to move the WMD and the other two entrances had since been rendered unusable by Mina and Amy piling up junk in front of them. Only explosives would be able to knock a hole in the wall or the door, and use of those might compromise the WMD. So they were stuck; the PMC outside couldn't move in without taking heavy causalities or use explosives to gain entry. Mina and Amy couldn't move because they would be gunned down the instant they set foot outside. Unless…

"This is ridiculous," Mina said to Amy, huddling near a window. "We can't get out of here. That WMD is our only bargaining chip, and they know it."

"We can't just drive it out of the facility," Amy stated. "They'll snipe us as soon as we start driving." Would they though?

Several more bullets whizzed past, with the snipers trying to psych the two of them out. It was certainly working, since Mina jumped at almost every shot that was fired.

"We're not going to be able to defeat all of these guys, without any of the technology we have on hand!" she yelled, dodging another bullet.

"I guess we have to bargain. Or something like that," Amy said, considering the options. "The question is, who's going to act first? I mean…" Another bullet snapped by. "…I'm not up for negotiating with these guys. Mina, you're better at this than I am."

"Great."

Several more minutes passed by with the sniper fire, then there was silence.

"What's up?" Mina asked out loud. She peeked out the window and saw a couple of SUVs start to drive up. "They're making their move," she told Amy.

Amy scrambled up to one of the windows and looked outside. She saw someone get out of the lead SUVs; it was Nephrite, and he had a megaphone in hand instead of the Calico SMG.

"Hello Ms. Mizuno! Ms. Aino!"

"Shit," Mina hissed. "He knows our names!"

That didn't surprise Amy at all, since the SAILOR team was basically controlled by the Nakanishi Group. It still concerned her that a person as amoral and uncaring as the COO of Nakanishi America would have information on them, especially their personal stuff.

"Hey Nephrite!" Amy yelled out the window. Several more SUVs had moved up, and one of them at least, had a minigun protruding from the roof, ready to go. "Do you want your nuke?"

"It would be ideal," he said back, over the megaphone.

"It would be ideal," Mina mocked. "Bullshit."

"Well, come and get it!" Amy said back. She fired a warning shot at one of the SUVs. It pinged off the armor plating that had been equipped and disintegrated.

"I'm going to ignore that," Nephrite calmly said back. "You have five minutes before we assault the facility, and your inevitable deaths as a result. Surrender the WMD, and you will be allowed to leave with your lives."

Amy didn't respond to that. Nephrite had forced their hand, and now the two of them had to figure out a way to get the WMD out of there and/or destroy it, prevent the bad guys from getting the WMD and escape with their lives. All without contact from the outside, outgunned and outnumbered.

"Let's just go."

"What?" Mina asked. The ridiculousness of the suggestion hit her like one of the sniper bullets. "I thought you said that they would snipe us if we just drove this thing out of here."

"We are outgunned and have been outplayed, Mina." Amy glazed at the WMD sitting on the floor. "We have everything to lose if they allow this WMD to be detonated tonight." She looked at Mina, her eyes piercing the soft gaze from Mina. "I. Will. Not. Let. That. Happen." She emphasized every word.

Mina looked back at her, but she trusted that woman with her life, even if it meant the end of hers. If she was going to make it happen, Amy would find a way.

"Alright. Let's get this thing into that truck then."

Mina and Amy manhandled the WMD on the trolley it was resting on to the back of the truck that they were about to drive out. It wasn't very heavy, considering it could take out an entire city, but then again, such was the nature of nuclear warfare.

Amy left Mina to finish up and went around to the front, where she noticed something very particular about this very truck. The windows were slightly tinted, bending local ordinance banning the tinting of windshields. The driver must have thought that it might give him an advantage in getting the WMD to Washington without being IDed. She took a look at the logo on the side; it read, GOURMOND CATERING (A SUBSIDIARY OF NAKANISHI AMERICA). Amy guessed that since that this was a company vehicle, that they might have some remote-kill device that would stop the truck in the event it was stolen or something like that.

"I've got an idea. One that doesn't involve a suicide mission."

Mina shrugged. "I'm game for a plan that doesn't get us killed."

* * *

Nephrite saw the truck start up and start to leave the facility. It wasn't unexpected though; the SAILOR team was a resolute and resourceful team, and they knew that the WMD was their only ticket out of there. Nephrite however, smiled at that thought. He was already one step ahead of them.

The truck had a remote stop feature built into it, and since it was a company vehicle, Nephrite had complete control over its systems, and could stop the truck whenever he felt like it. Maybe he'd get their hopes up by letting them get to the gate and then killing the vehicle there, letting his men get the coup de grace. He'd figured that the SAILOR team would come after the WMD, since they had been slowly building up evidence against them but no matter. Tonight, they would settle this nonsense once and for all. Then, they could finally get back to conquering the world again, heh. Someone fired a round off at the truck.

"Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapon?" Nephrite announced over the radio.

The truck moved forward a moderate pace, going all-terrain as it veered off of the road, past their blockade and onto the snow, toward the chain link fence that surrounded the perimeter of the processing plant.

"Not today you don't." He hit a button on his Blackberry and killed the engine, bringing the truck to a halt before it crashed through the fence. "First squad," he said over a radio. "Check out the truck. The rest of you, get into the building and make sure it's secure. Keep those guns ready." The SUV with the minigun drove over to the truck and several soldiers spilled out to check the disabled vehicle.

Nephrite resolved not to be fooled; in his position, he would have jammed something on the accelerator and would have slipped out while the enemy was trying to chase after the out of control truck. But he had enough men to go after the truck and secure the facility, so nice try SAILOR team. Better luck next time. Oh wait.

Nephrite moved in with his command squad flanking him on either side, talking into their radios and giving out orders. He walked quickly and deliberately, arriving at the facility in no time at all it seemed.

"Sir!" one of the PMC soldiers called out to him. "There's no one in there!"

"Are you sure?" he asked. Not a surprise at all. They were probably in the truck, and he had that angle perfectly…

BANG!

…covered.

He turned around to see one of his soldiers go down from a shot to the chest as they opened the rear door to the truck. Mina jumped out and shot another one of them by the door. Reacting, the minigunner swiveled his gun around toward Mina…and was promptly shot down by Amy, who had hidden in the cab of the truck, manually controlling it in an uncomfortable position. She had kicked open the door and delivered a shot to the gunner's head. He went down.

The other members of the squad scrambled to fight the immediate threat in front of them, but in quick succession, Mina and Amy gunned down them all.

"Mina! Minigun!"  
"On it!" Mina tumbled down from the truck and into the cold snow. She was shocked by the sudden burst of cold, but it spurred her on to get to the minigun. She ran over to the SUV, which was a scant fifteen feet away from her. Another PMC soldier popped out of the SUV, trying to get a shot off. Mina dropped to one knee and fired two shots, double tap. He went down. She kept running and jumped into the SUV. A quick check of the vehicle revealed no one inside. Mina hopped up to the minigun and aimed it right at Nephrite.

Unfortunately, that remote stop feature also applied to the SUVs. Just when she was going to fire, Nephrite hit the kill switch to all the vehicles in a brief moment of panic.

This also included the electronics vehicle that Amy had seen earlier.

"Amy!" Mina screamed, realizing that the minigun wasn't going to work. Then her HUD came back to life, illuminating the buildings and in Amy's case, scanning for additional targets.

"I'm on it!" Amy ran over to the SUV, whipping out her tablet computer and trying to find the IP address for the truck. Surprisingly, many vehicles had IP address for a variety of maintenance and diagnostic properties, such as telling the driver that the oil needed changing, or that a tire was flat and that the appropriate services had been notified. That being said, someone could probably use that information other than its intended purposes.

Nephrite exhaled, thinking he had dodged a bullet on that one. "Get them!" he yelled to his mercenaries. They hesitated, seeing what had happened to their comrades.

"They cannot use that minigun, now go!" He raised his Calico and fired a couple of shots, ignoring his previous order to not shoot at the nuclear device. It would be fine…right? That seemed to work, and a couple of squads moved forward, their weapons firing. Another couple of squads covered.

"Any century now, Amy!" Mina screamed. She fired from the turret of the minigun, using her HUD to identify and track targets, but there were so many of them. The torrent of incoming fire forced her to duck down.

Amy found the remote access key were still in the car (in the cupholder), much to her surprise. She thought that they would have been smarter than that, but maybe these guys were just that dumb. She turned the car on, and a quick burst of data shot out from the computer that ran the GPS and other onboard systems essential to maintaining and running the car. Nephrite quickly shut it down again, but Amy had all she needed.

"Goddammit, shouldn't have got those keyless systems," Nephrite bitched to himself. "I'll just disable the SUV from here." Despite his efforts, the SUV started up again.

"What the…"

"Mina, I can't get you enough power to the minigun without completely draining the battery on this vehicle," Amy stated from below. Within a couple of seconds, she had accessed the onboard computer and disabled the remote access feature.

"That's great," Mina bitched back. She fired some more shots, but the PMC soldiers kept getting closer. "Have any more ideas?!"

"Well, I have control over this vehicle, so I can at least get us out of here!" Amy shifted over to the driver's seat and started over to the truck, where the WMD was still in the back, on that stupid trolley.

"Get ready to move!"

Mina saw what Amy was about to do, and ducked back down from the gun turret and opened up the back of the SUV. She fired some more rounds off at the advancing PMC troops.

Amy put the car in drive and sped it toward the truck.

"Hold on!" Amy slammed on the brakes, sending Mina flying around in the back, bouncing around like in a pinball machine. She drifted the car so that the back was facing the doors of the truck.

"Ow!" Mina got back up and saw the WMD in the back of the truck. She figured that she had to get out and push it toward the open space of the SUV. "Do you want me to get out and push?"

"No need."

"Wait, what does that mean…?"

"You might want to get out of the way."

Mina found that statement to be somewhat strange until she realized what Amy was about to do.

Amy punched the car into reverse and accelerated, ramming the truck and sending the trolley rolling forward into the back of the SUV. It landed with a loud "clunk" in the back.

Mina braced herself for a nuclear explosion, but the bomb was made to withstand such abuse. Hopefully.

"Get the door closed and we're out of here!" Amy screamed at her, leaning out of the window to fire some more shots at the advancing troops. They were only fifty feet away.

Mina looked at the damaged swing-out doors and hoped that they would close, after all the abuse that Amy had just put them through. She reached for the handles and pulled the doors shut. They closed, despite the damage.

"Done!"

"We're out!" Amy hit the accelerator and pummeled over the chainlink fence, escaping into the pre-dawn darkness.

"Why won't you work?!" Nephrite screamed at his phone. He hit the kill switch over and over again, but to no avail; Amy was in complete control of the car now and there was nothing that he could do to stop it.

"Fuck!" he slammed the phone on the ground, and it exploded into a thousand different pieces as it hit the hardened earth. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

The rest of the PMC looked on, dumbfounded by his sudden outburst. It was very rare to see him like this, but then again, he did just lose a nuclear weapon.

"Don't just stand there!" he swore at them. "Chase them!"

"We can't sir," one of his command squad leaders said to him. "You've disabled all of our vehicles."

Nephrite realized his mistake, but was not going to have his authority questioned. He pulled out his Calico and shot the man square in the face. He flopped down, dead.

"Would anyone else care to point out my mistakes?!" he shouted out to them. "Or would somebody like to grow a pair and get these vehicles started again?!"

This made the PMC soldiers get back to finding a solution to getting their WMD back. They quickly scattered to their vehicles and tried to get them restarted.

* * *

"Amy…" Mina said to her as she was driving down the road away from the facility. "Don't ever do that again."

"Heh," she replied, giving a slight smile. "Easy for you to say."

"I thought that we would never get out of there."

This time, there was a bigger smile from Amy. "Me too."

They drove on in silence before Amy started to slow the car down.

"Uh…" she said out loud, like she was unsure of something.

"Yeah?"

"Where are we taking this thing?"

That statement hit Mina like…well, a nuclear explosion. They really hadn't thought this one through, but then again, this was simply the consequence of finding out the earth-shattering plans three days earlier and spending half of them travelling.

"I don't know…it's the only definite, concrete proof we have of Nakanishi's plans in America. But if we bring it into D.C, there is a very real chance that Nakanishi will recover the WMD and carry out their mission."

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, weighed down by the situation.

"We'll ask Artemis," Amy finally said, making a command decision.

Amy tapped on her HUD to alert Artemis that they really needed to talk to him.

"What's up guys?" he replied, munching on some cheese puffs. He was watching the rest of the SAILOR team drive into Tokyo to assault the Nakanishi HQ.

"We have the WMD."

"Great."

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"Uh…what do we do with it?" Amy asked.

"Oh…yeah. Let me ask Luna about that, hold on. Luna!"

Again, another moment of silence before Luna got on the line with them.

"Okay, you have the WMD?"

"Yes, it's riding in the back of the SUV we have here. It's a Nakanishi vehicle, but I've managed to disable the remote kill and GPS tracking on it." Amy took another look at the WMD riding in the back. It sat there, lazily like a fat man.

"I'm going to bring up your location. Standby."

Using the secure channel that neither the Japanese government nor Nakanishi knew of, Luna routed a signal through several communications satellites, through the CIA's KH-13 and focused down on their location.

"Located. You're on Constitution highway, continue driving until you reach the main highway toward DC. Looks like the Nakanishi units are still stuck at that meat processing plant."

"Can you explain why they have a PMC out here?" Mina asked, looking out the back window. It was cracked a little bit, but the advantages of having an armored vehicle were apparent in this case.

"My guess? The county outsourced its police force to Nakanishi. They take over some on the policing and in return, Nakanishi pays the county and gets a nice playground for its operations."

"That's nice and all," Amy said, cutting Mina and Luna's guesswork off. "But what the hell should we do with this thing?"

Luna thought about it for a second.

"What do you think about it, Amy?" she finally replied.

"Why me?" Amy shot back.

"You're kind of in charge. You guys found the information. We just process it."

Amy sucked in her breath, irritated but Luna was right.

"We compromise. We take this thing somewhere isolated and drop it off. We take the vehicle to go see the President, and we get her to send out someone to confirm the WMD is active."

Mina didn't see any other options other than what Amy was suggesting.

"I agree," she stated.

"Alright then, that's the plan. I'm looking up an area that you might be able to drop it off…"

Luna searched around and found the Manassas battlefield.

"This might be a bit out of your way, but here's an relatively isolated location." She punched up a location near the visitor's center, but tucked away so that no one would notice it.

"The Bull Run Battlefield?" Amy asked.

"Manassas." Amy didn't really understand the entire dynamic between calling it "Manassas" or "Bull Run", but it was the all the same…right?

"Whatever."

"There's a spot you can drop it off here without too much of a fuss."

Luna highlighted the directions and location on both of their HUDs.

"Affirmative," Amy replied. "We'll let you get back to your operation there."

"Thanks. Contact us if you really need something, but again, we're really busy making sure that Nakanishi goes down here."

"Got it. Thanks for the help."

"Luna out."

Mina looked at the direction on her HUD. "It's about an hour or so drive from here. We'd better get going."

"I'm already on it."

Amy continued driving on Highway 522, then up to Highway 15N/29N, and followed it all the way to the spot near the Manassas Battlefield Visitor's Center.

It was a mostly uneventful drive.

"Hey Amy," Mina piped up after thirty minutes of silence. She had been watching out for police cars and the like, but even cops had to take a vacation now and again.

"Yeah?"

"You wanted to become a doctor, right?"

Amy hadn't thought about that in such a long time that she had almost forgotten about that little fact.

"My mom was a great doctor," Amy replied, keeping her focus on the road. "Dad left us, and then mom started working overtime to help support me. I saw how much good she did, how many people she helped, how many lives she saved. I've done the opposite. I've hurt so many people, I've ruined so many lives. I'll never be able to make up for what I've done."

"Amy…" Mina started to say, but Amy kept going on.

"I know that we were thrust into this, that we were not given a choice, but I knew. Dammit…" She clenched her hands around the steering wheel. "I knew that there was something wrong from the beginning. I went along with it. But now…"

Mina let Amy rant on a bit. It was extremely rare to see Amy this upset, but the stakes were getting higher and higher by the hour, and the stress of the mission was getting to them.

"Pull over."

Amy looked at Mina. "What…?"  
"Pull the fucking car over."

Amy complied, pulling the SUV to the side of the road.

"Mina…I…"

"Look, this entire situation blows," Mina said, taking her HUD glasses off for a second. "And I understand your frustration. So, get out of the driver's seat and let me drive for a little bit."

"But you drove all the way from…"

"Amy." Mina looked straight into the eyes of Amy. "Get into the passenger's seat and take a nap."

"Okay…"

Mina and Amy switched seats, spending a few seconds in the frigid air outside before hopping into their respective seats.

"You don't have to do this Mina, I'm perfectly okay…" Amy said before drifting off into a deep slumber.

Mina just smiled at her and pulled out onto the highway, checking the traffic and making sure that the Nakanishi vehicles weren't following them.

Mina drove the rest of the way in peace, punctured by the heavily breathing of Amy. She looked just as beautiful as she had earlier this morning.

This time though, Mina easily pushed those thoughts out of her head, focusing at the mission on hand. Love could wait for WMDs, was her reasoning.

They finally arrived at Manassas thirty minutes later, with Amy still asleep in the passenger's seat. Mina took a right onto a small, unmarked road meant for the audio tour of the battlefield. There weren't very many visitors this time of year, if at all.

"Amy…" Mina reached over and shook her. She gasped for air and woke up.

"Yeah…yeah!" she sat up quite quickly.

"We're here. Let's get this thing out."

"Okay."

Amy got out of the car and did a quick scan of the area with her HUD. No one was in sight.

"Clear."

Mina opened up the back door, still damaged slightly from the rough use this morning. Along with Amy, she pulled the small WMD out, and set it on the ground.

"That's still kind of heavy," Mina noted, rubbing her hands together.

"Uh-huh." Looking around, Amy found a small ditch by the side of the road. They hefted the WMD over to it, and covered it with some loose branches and snow.

"Hope that keeps it hidden away," Amy said nervously. It wasn't everyday that you had to hide a nuclear weapon away from someone.

"It will."

They both stood there for a second, wondering about the situation before leaving and driving off to the meeting point with the Congress members.


	39. Chapter XXXVII: …When the war began

**Chapter XXXVII: Tomorrow, when the war began.**

**0230hrs, 17 December 2013, Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan**

_"Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today. Evil unchecked grows, evil tolerated poisons the whole system." Jawaharlal Nehru_

* * *

The three other SAILOR Team members drove in their Suzuki Wagon Kei-car down the deserted streets of Tokyo, looking for the HQ of the Nakanishi Group. It wasn't hard to find.

"God, that is a massive building." Lita looked up at the glimmering building, lit up with Christmas lights and spotlights on the ground. It wasn't the tallest building in Tokyo; that would be the Tokyo Sky Tree, a whopping 634 meters high (or to those countries still using imperial measurements, about 2000 feet). She then checked the Taser on her utility belt, making sure that is was ready to go. There was a second one there, just in case she found herself in a sticky situation. "We're not supposed to kill anyone, correct?"

"Anyone below the 50th floor. After that, anyone up to the top floor, the 55th, is toast," Serena replied, putting on her eyepiece HUD. "Can you hear us Luna?"

"I have you," she replied. "We're in full control of the medical facility, and we're ready to commence this operation. We only have five hours before the terrorist attacks begin, so we must hurry."

"Roger. Pull over here, Raye."

Raye pulled over the curb and looked up at the building. "Damn. This is going to be fun."

"How are Mina and Amy doing in America?" Serena was worried about the WMDs that Luna had told them about earlier.

"One of the WMDs has been secured, and they're trying to get the leadership to respond to the upcoming terrorist attacks."

Serena breathed a sigh of relief. At least that part of the plan was going well. She continued on with the briefing.

"Let's go over the plan then," Serena said, pulling out her very own tablet computer that Amy had set up for her. Tapping on a few icons on the screen, she pulled up a schematic of the skyscraper.

"We're going to enter through the garage here, on floor B1," she said, focusing on the basement. "There are two guards at the checkpoint to the garage, so Lita, you'll take them out with your Taser when we approach and neutralize them."

"Got it," Lita said. She was pretty excited to get to use the Taser again.

"Then, we are going to proceed to the elevator here." Serena pointed to a bank of elevators near the center of the garage. "I'll have Luna override the security controls on them, and we'll proceed to the security room on the fifth floor, where we'll drop Lita off. She will secure the security room, and deactivate alarms, CCTV, motion sensors and any other security countermeasures that Luna can't access from the outside."

"How many security guards in the room?" Lita asked her. It was asking a lot of one person to take down an entire floor of guards, even with all her training and weaponry. And she was going to do it without killing anyone.

"There are five guards in the room. Coupled with five more on patrol on the fifth floor."

"Great."

"Well, at least you have your shield. I trust you, you can do it."

Lita took a deep breath in and reminded herself that she could do it. "Yeah. I guess I can."

Serena nodded at her and continued on with her briefing.

"However, that security room is only for the rest of the building. The one that Raye and I will be eliminating will be on the 50th floor. That's the one that is guarded by Nakanishi's PMC. There are over thirty guards, all armed with assault rifles and body armor."

"What type of weaponry are we talking about here?" Raye asked.

"Several of the guards are carrying what appears to be Howa Type 64 battle rifles, and the rest are carrying Type 89 assault rifles."

"So they're almost like JSDF guys?"

"More like exactly the same. Most of them are ex-JGSDF or Special Assault Team members, and they know how to handle their weapons."

"Well, we're just going to have to be better than them," Raye said, putting her eyepiece HUD on. She checked the G36K on the seat next to her, equipped with a reflex sight and a Beta-C Mag 100 round drum.

"Raye, that's overkill," Lita said, looking at her weapon.

"Says the person who carries the machine gun." Lita wasn't actually packing a machine gun at this moment; she had a HK416 slung over her shoulder.

"I'm not carrying one right now!"

"You would, if you could," Raye smirked.

"Okay you two," Serena interrupted, somewhat exasperated by their bantering. "That's the armament that the guards are carrying on the fiftieth floor up."

"And how many after that…?"

Serena brow furrowed at that. "Unknown, maybe thirty, forty more."

Lita threw up her hands in anger. "Why do they need so much security?"

"Well, us." Serena continued to poke at the screen, bringing up the last details of the plan.

"It's not going to be enough," Raye said.

"Let's hope so." Serena focused in on a data center on the fifty-fourth floor. "Our main objective is the data stored in the center here. We need to fight our way there before the data is destroyed by the personnel there."

"How are we going to do that if we're tied up fighting at the security station?"

"We're just going to be fast then," Serena said. "We need to carve a path through the security station to here." She pointed just past the security station, to a bank of elevators that lead to the rest of the building. "Raye, you're going to have to do the heavy lifting here while I try to get to the data center as fast as I can."

Raye nodded. "Understood. How much time will it take to destroy the data in the room?"

"At this point in the morning? Let me ask Luna." She tapped her HUD and contacted Luna.

"Luna, go ahead."

"How long will it take for the security team to destroy the data in the data center?"

"A couple of seconds, if you don't hit the security station fast enough and shut down power and security commands to the top five floors. But they will only destroy the information if they get a command from the security post, so that's the only thing keeping them from destroying the data, at present."

"Shit," Raye said, continuing to peer up at the huge building.

"Why would they only destroy the data on only orders from the security station?" Serena asked, somewhat curious at that peculiar quirk.  
"It seems like they had a massive security breach a month ago with a remote camera placed on a projector in the conference room on the fifty-fifth floor. This was caused by a lapse in security due to a decentralized and unorganized system of protection. Since then, they've centralized the security personnel, one of the fifth floor for everyone else, and one on the fiftieth floor for the top executives and everyone like that. And one consequence is that the head security officer has complete control over the operations in the facility, especially on the fifty-fifth floor. But if he is killed, and the security stations on both floors disabled, the data center will delay in destroying the information even if there is a massive gunfight right outside their doors."

"Thanks, Ms. Exposition," Serena groaned. "You could have just told us that they'll be slowed down."

"I'm sorry SAILOR Moon, but that's the way it goes," Luna replied, tapping out commands on the computer in front of her. They had set up a command post in, well, the conference room that got used for everything.

"Raye, you'll take the security post then," Serena said.

"Sounds good."

"I'll take the fifty-fourth floor, once we've blazed a path toward there through the guards."

Raye nodded.

"Alright then," Serena replied. "How are our guests?"

"Akamatsu and Iwasaki are doing just fine," Luna said. "Nice work on taking them down. They're being held in one of the medical rooms under guard."

"Heh, they'll finally get to experience how it feels to be trapped in one of those rooms," Raye sneered.

* * *

It had been a long day for the guards at the check-in post at the Nakanishi HQ garage. Only a couple more hours and they could finally go home and take a rest from all the boring work that they did. Plus, warming up would be a nice benefit as well, since sitting in an unheated guard shack was not very comfortable. All of a sudden, a small Kei-car pulled up from the main road and approached the garage. One of them rolled their eyes and grabbed a small tablet computer, which had all the day's deliveries, special visitors, and the like on it. It was strange though; most people who came through here didn't drive Kei-cars unless they were new hires.

"Morning," he sleepily said, as the back window on the right side of the car rolled down. "What is your purpose for visiting…"

He never got to finish, as a charge from Lita's Taser hit him in the chest, shocking him and sending him to ground. The other guard scrambled out of his chair, but by that time, Lita was already out of the car and had set her sights on him. Firing another shot from the Taser stunned him, and within five seconds, the guardhouse had been neutralized.

"Nice work," Serena commented from the backseat.

"Thanks," Lita replied, taping over the guards' mouth and eyes with duct tape. She also restrained them with flexcuffs on their hands and legs. Leaving them in the corner of the guard shack, she jumped back into the car, slamming the door shut.

"Okay, let's head to the next objective," Serena said to Raye, tapping her on the shoulder.

"Right." Raye drove down the ramp leading to the parking garage, and continued forward until she reached the bank of elevators. The three of them piled out of the car and walked over to the elevator, still keeping a lookout for guards. Serena tuned in onto her HUD and contacted Luna.

"Okay, Luna, we're at the elevators. Unlock the security on them so we can get to the objective."

"Understood. Standby." The locked symbol on the elevator display turned from red, to green, indicating that they could be used.

"You first, Lita." Serena gestured toward the elevators.

"My pleasure." Lita stepped into an open elevator, hit the fifth floor button, and watched as the doors closed. She checked her Taser, her shield, and her weapons. This was going to be a tough one, but she would make it.

* * *

The action started right away on the fifth floor, when Lita stepped out of the elevator and right into one of the guards. Reacting quickly, she punched him with her left hand and brought him into a stranglehold, rendering him unconscious in a couple of seconds. She restrained him using flexcuffs, destroyed his radio, took away his sidearm and tossed him into the elevator.

"Okay…one down…" she muttered to herself, checking her HUD. The security room was to her right, about twenty meters down the hall, with several guards patrolling the offices on this floor. She moved forward from the elevators and checked the hallway; no movement. Holding her ballistic shield up, she continued forward, quietly until she came to a junction, with the security room in front of her, a hallway passing in front of that, and a guard that was about to round the corner.

Lita snapped her Taser up and fired a CO2 cartridge at him, bringing him down, paralyzed by the electric shock to his muscles. The people in the security room didn't seem to notice; nothing ever interesting happened around here, and so the video cameras went unwatched, even though Lita was right outside their room. The door to the room was protected by a keypad, but Luna was kind enough to remote-access it and provide the code to the door; 3493.

Lita tapped the code in, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Like the briefing had mentioned, there were five guards in the room, all in various states of awareness and alertness. It was a moderately sized room, with a bank of TV screens to her left, two desks for writing reports with computers on them to her right, the main desk for the watch commander in the center, and a small kitchenette for preparing Ramen, coffee and tea behind the watch commander's desk. The watch commander was also behind a sheet of bulletproof glass, which formed a half a cubicle around him. Lita calculated it would take the two on the right, who were watching the TV screens, to respond the slowest, since they were facing away from her and were not paying attention anyway. The two guards on the left would be the fastest to respond, since they were facing her, and had their weapons ready. The most challenging part was to get the watch commander out from his shell and get him to attack her. Lita figured that she could come up with…something, yeah.

The first part went fine; she aimed her Taser at the first two, firing the remaining cartridges at the guards, paralyzing them for a least a couple of seconds while she dealt with the other two. She dropped that Taser and moved to the right. One of the TV monitor guys started to swivel his chair around, seeing the black ballistic shield come in through the door and trying to bring up his weapon. She ran forward, bashing him with the shield and sending him flying. The second guard was trying to get out of his chair, but was thrown back by Lita continuing her momentum into him from the first guard, and also sent him flying.

By this time, the watch commander was trying to raise the alarm, but he had to make a split second decision between extending his arm out to hit the button, or raising his pistol to the firing position and maybe try to slow Lita down. He chose the latter, which in hindsight, was probably not the best of decisions. The shield deflected the 9mm bullets from his Beretta 92F, and she promptly bashed him into the wall, stunning him and knocking his weapon away.

Lita swung around and checked the room. Five moaning, stunned and confused guards lay on the ground. She smiled, and had to admit, that was some pretty good handiwork.

Suddenly, there was a burst of radio traffic from the remaining guards outside; they had heard the gunshots and while they were muffled since they took place inside the security room, it was enough for some concern. Ignoring the radio calls, Lita set about restraining everyone in the room, dragging them together in the center of the room, flexcuffing them, disabling their radios and weapons, and making sure that they didn't cause any more trouble.

"Alrighty then," Lita said, looking at the guards struggling in the center. "Nice work, team. Oh wait, that's just me, heh."

With a swipe of her left arm, she destroyed the alarm system, and with another, the TV monitors. She continued this process until all of the security equipment had been thoroughly bashed in, and was unable to function anymore.

The three guards that had heard the gunshots finally got their act together, and upon finding their fallen comrade outside, punched the keycode in and charged into the room. Lita, was caught somewhat off guard, in between destroying the last piece of equipment (a coffee maker, she didn't like the stuff), and getting her shield back from where she had laid it against a wall. One of the guards readied his Beretta and fired a couple of shots, forgetting that there was bulletproof glass there. The shots impacted against the glass and cracked it dramatically, but did not penetrate. Lita, now recovered from the surprise guests, brought up her shield and a second three-shot Taser, and snapped all three cartridges off, stunning the guards and securing the floor.

"This is SAILOR Jupiter," she said into her radio after securing the guards with the others. "Security station is disabled and floor is secure." All in under five minutes too. Not bad. Not bad at all.

* * *

"Roger, we're about to move in," SAILOR Moon said in response. "Hold your position and prevent the security guards from calling the police, over."

"Affirmative."

She had held the elevator up on the forty-ninth floor, waiting for SAILOR Jupiter to take down the security station.

"Let's do this." SAILOR Moon hit the button for the fiftieth floor; that was the furthest it could go before changing elevators, due to security reasons.

"I'm ready." Raye smiled for a second, then wiped it off of her face; memories of the flaming church flashed back quickly before she pushed them away. This was different. She was going to make up for all that she had done in the past, and bringing these bastards down was just the start. Raye readied her G36K, as did Serena with her M4 CQB Receiver. She took a breath in, turned on her HUD, and waited for the door to slide open.

Ding.

It took a second for the doors to open. Serena's HUD lit up, isolating five moving targets, patrolling the hallway in front of her, ranging from ten to fifty meters away. The hallway would lead to the security room, and beyond that, the elevators. Kind of like the Matrix…somewhat.

"Engaging!" Raye brought up her G36K and depressed the trigger, snapping to a target on the right. Serena did the same, aiming for a guard on the left. They went down. The two of them moved on, bringing their attention to the other three guards. More concentrated fire killed them in an instant; they didn't even have the time to react.

"Move!" SAILOR Moon screamed. Raye took point, keeping her weapon in the firing position and sweeping from left to right, maintaining her field of fire. Another guard appeared from a side room; a burst took care of him, sending him flopping on the ground. Serena was right behind Raye, and snapped off another burst at another guard that came out of the same room. He went down.

"Coming up at a corner!" Raye yelled out.

"Security is on the right, after the corner!" Serena replied.

"Got it!" Stopping quickly, Raye peeked around the corner and saw no one there. There were some more offices, but their main target was straight in front of them with a keypad entrance. The elevators to the top floors were on their left, down another short hallway.

"Serena!" Raye hissed. "On the left!" SAILOR Moon nodded her acknowledgement.

"Moving!" Serena made a dash for the elevators, while Raye moved forward toward the security room. As Serena moved around the corner, she saw the bank of elevators, three of them, and ran toward the center one. Suddenly, two guards popped out from behind a pair of support columns and started to fire their Howa Type 89 assault rifles at her. She tried to get out of the way, hiding behind a vending machine selling ramen noodles but a bullet clipped her in the chest. Serena fell down, clutching at the place where the bullet had hit her. Fortunately, she was wearing a bullet resistant vest, with a ceramic plate but it still hurt like hell, and it knocked the wind out of her for a second. The two guards scrambled over, trying to see if they had eliminated their target. Serena barely recovered in time, bringing her M4 CQB up to the hip position, flipped to the full auto selector, and fired. All thirty rounds in her magazine were expended in about three seconds, but the two guards were toast. Their vests were Level IIA, rated only for pistol rounds which the 5.56 round easily penetrated. They fell back, dead.

"You okay Serena?!" Raye yelled over her radio. She had seen her friend go down.

"I'm fine, get going!"

Serena made a break for the elevator, snagging a keycard from one of the downed guards and swiping it by a card reader on the elevator. She then hit the button for the fifty-fourth floor.

Raye, at this time, had reached the door and was proceeding in a much more dynamic fashion that Lita. She simply placed a PETN charge on the door and wired it to remotely detonate.

"Got a present for ya," she smiled. Raye moved back to a safe distance and hit the detonator. The resulting explosion knocked the steel reinforced door off its hinges, into a guard, and finally bashing itself into a row of TV monitors.

Raye dashed forward, removing the pins from two flashbangs and throwing them inside the room. She stopped before she got to the door, as not to blinded by the resulting flash and deafened by the 180 decibel roar that would accompany detonation.

BANG! BANG!

The flashbangs went off, and Raye charged in. Like the intel stated, there were at least ten guards in there, including the watch commander, who was behind bulletproof glass like on the fifth floor. One guard was already down from the explosion, and several others were wounded and incapacitated from the explosion. The rest had been temporarily stunned by the flashbang. Raye did a quick sweep of remaining targets; one guard down, three immobilized and six active targets. She raised her G36K and fired, maintaining fire discipline by using three round bursts. One…two…three…four…five…five guards went down before they had the time to bring their weapons up. But again, the watch commander took cover behind the bullet proof glass. This one was no slouch; he had special operations experience and was way more prepared than the loser downstairs. Unfortunately, that didn't count for squat if you got hit square in the face with a flashbang. Which occurred when Raye tossed another over the bulletproof glass and right into his face; it detonated, completely incapacitating him. He staggered about before being cut down by the last couple rounds in Raye's G36.

"Hehe," she said, ejecting the heavy Beta-C mag and replacing it with a more conventional 30 round box magazine. "Raye, you're a fucking maniac," she said to herself.

* * *

Outside the data control center, the lone technician on duty was wondering what the hell was going on out there. It sounded like gunshots, but he couldn't be sure. If there was trouble, why hadn't the watch commander called him to start destroying the data? He waited for a few more seconds, but the loud pops and bangs were not stopping. Then someone started screaming that they were hit.

"Oh shit." The technician reached for the phone on his desk, next to the doujinshi that he was reading, and called the watch commander. Nothing. He tried again. There was still no response. The gunshots started to get closer and closer. The tech had to do something, orders or no orders. He started to delete the data from all of the servers, starting with America and moving on to Europe…

He was interrupted by the door being blown in and a lone figure rushing in through the entrance.

Serena saw the tech deleting all of the data and pointed her M4 at him.

"Stop that shit!" she screamed at him. The tech, being paid at minimum wage, was not going to die for this and immediately stopped the deleting protocol for the other servers. A huge electric surge was passed through each server, frying it completely and destroying whatever data was inside.

"What did you delete?!" she interrogated, coughing in the smoke from the destroyed servers, pointing the M4 in his face.

"I…uh…uh…"

She started to squeeze the trigger.

"It was all the data for Nakanishi's operations in America!" he replied quickly.

"Anything else?!"

"I was starting on Asia, but…"  
She jabbed the weapon into his face some more, making him flinch. "That's all, I swear!"

Serena kept looking at him, not quite sure to believe him or not. After what seemed like a moment or so, she removed her weapon from the technician's face, and allowed him to breath.

"My problem is with Nakanishi, not with you. Do what I say, and you'll be fine." Serena kept a close ear on any approaching baddies, but it seemed she had eliminated most of them here and Raye had scattered the rest of them.

"I need you to send this information to this IP Address." She handed him her tablet computer.

"I don't think it works that way…" he said to her, but she glared at him.

"Okay, okay, I'll make it work…" The tech gulped and set about transferring the data to wherever this crazy girl wanted it to go. You simply didn't just transfer terabytes of data with a push of a button. Well, you could, but it did take some setup. He finally got the data transfer set up in five minutes, with Serena pacing about impatiently.

"Hurry it up already," she bitched to him.

"I'm going as fast as I can," he replied nervously. "Your connection is slowing ours down."

She tapped her foot, paced some more.

Raye came into the room.

"The security room has been cleared out and equipment destroyed," she said to Serena.

"Good. Tech guy, how much longer?!"

The data stream ended. "I'm finished," he said.

"Thank goodness. Alright then." Serena approached him threatingly; the tech flinched again. "Stay." It was like she was talking to a dog. She turned around and left with Raye, leaving the tech confused but grateful that his life had been spared.

"Lita, how are you doing?" Serena asked over the radio, still keeping a lookout for enemy guards.

"Doing just fine," Lita replied. The other civilian guards hadn't checked in, and Lita made sure that anyone coming up to the fifth floor was immediately detained and locked up. So far, she had snagged at least five random people. Despite the massive gunfight going on upstairs, no one seemed to notice it due to its distance from the rest of the guards in the building. With the control center down, they ignored it and passed it off as another one of the shenanigans those trigger-happy PMC guys up top were up to.

"How is everything up there?"

"We got all the data and we are exfiling from this facility."

* * *

Luna got the data stream almost immediately. Buried beneath all the status reports, the log files, the powerpoints, the memos, was the correspondence between Beryl and her minions detailing the information about the attacks. It took her a couple of minutes to find the emails, texts and calls, but they were there, in the open without any encryption whatsoever. Beryl must have been super cocky about that kind of stuff.

"I've got all the data containing their plans for Asia, parts of Europe, but that's it," she said in a disappointed voice. "Operation Take Hold", was the phrase that came up the most. Some fragmented conversations about America and the Middle East came up, but there was nothing concrete; especially in regards to the WMD. "What happened to the rest of it?"

"The tech started to destroy the data, and I guess he succeeded a little bit," Serena said sheepishly.

Luna sighed, but she knew that trying to get all of that information would have been a long shot in the first place, even with the full team and in good conditions. However, since Mina and Amy were in the US, they had to make do what they had.

Luna hoped that what little information they had regarding the massive terrorist attacks would be of use; otherwise, many more people were going to die in vain. She started to send out emails, SMSes, making phone calls, to anyone and everyone who would listen to them concerning "Operation Take Hold."

As she was doing so, she spotted an email concerning the CEO of the Nakanishi Group, a Mr. Ichigo Yamada.

"I would like to meet with you tomorrow in the morning, Beryl."

That didn't strike her as weird until she saw the date. It was sent only hours before, from the Nakanishi HQ.

"SAILOR Moon, new mission objective," she said over the radio. "Artemis, get Ichigo Yamada's address up!"

"Got it!"

It was somewhere on the outskirts of Tokyo…kind of. It was a large mansion, even by American standards. Supposedly, eminent domain had been used to build the place, an obvious misuse of government power.

"What's the new objective?" Serena asked, exiting the elevator in the basement and walking toward their Kei car. No guards in sight.

"Ichigo Yamada, he's in his mansion in Miyawaki."

"That's pretty far away," Lita said. "I don't know if we can make it in this tiny Kei car."

"You're going to have to. These terrorist attacks are going to start soon and I don't know if I can get all the law enforcement agencies to cooperate and to accept the data as factual. For all they know, I'm just a crank caller."

That was a real possibility, considering that the SAILOR unit did not officially exist. That was a risk that they were just going to have to take though.

"How many hours to the terrorist attacks?"

Luna looked at the time on her watch. Four hours. At least the SAILOR team had been quick about it.

"Four hours remain. Better hurry."

"Understood, send us the directions." Serena motioned to Raye to get into the driver's seat. Raye replied with a roll of the eyes, but she complied, jumping into the seat and starting the Kei car up.

Artemis sent the directions from his computer to their HUDs.

"Got it," Serena said. She looked over at Lita, who seemed to be wiped out, as she was leaning against the car, holding her prosthetic arm.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just a bit tired."

Serena believed her. "Alright then. Hope on in. We're off to see the wizard."

Lita pulled herself together and got into the back seat, with Serena close behind. Seeing that all were in the car, Raye put it into drive and pulled out of the garage, calming leaving as if nothing had happened.


	40. Chapter XXXVIII:Someone set us up…

**Chapter XXXVIII: Someone set us up the bomb.**

**1230hrs, 16 December 2013, Alexandria, Virginia, United States.**

_"There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders." General Curtis LeMay_

* * *

A couple of hours later, Amy drove up to the apartment that Georgia had told her to meet her at. Mina had tried to drive some more, but Amy insisted after she had let her sleep all the way to Manassas.

"Luna, is this thing safe now?" she asked over the radio, looking at the location of where they dropped the WMD off on a map. "I do not want to be responsible for letting this thing blow up."

"It seems like you've cut the remote detonator, and I don't think that there's any chance of nuclear detonation."

"You don't think?"

"I can't be certain unless you open up the WMD and take a look inside," Luna replied. "But whoever jury-rigged that thing doesn't seem to know what they're doing, because it would have to be detonated within a small radius, enough to kill the user…hold on."

Amy heard her talking to the other team. "We're in full control of the medical facility, and we're ready to commence this operation. We only have five hours before the terrorist attacks begin, so we must hurry."

"Luna, it sounds like you're really busy, we've got it from here." Amy hoped that everything was going well in Japan. As much as America was important, the operation in Japan to obtain the data from the Nakanishi HQ was just as important. Maybe even more so.

"Thanks, I'll try to get back to you ASAP." Luna terminated the conversation and left the two of them alone.

"Maybe it was a suicide mission," Mina said, looking at the map with Amy.

"Who knows. Hope that it's safe there."

The two of them got out of the SUV and walked toward the apartment. It was a nice, rustic place, with a gable roof, brick façade, and big, clear windows that overlooked the block. This nice view was tempered by the fact that the plaque on the side of the building noted that this place had been used to trade slaves in the antebellum years.

Amy looked by the entrance and located the buzzer for apartment 302. It merely read, "Georgia Clemens." No mention of a congress member here. She hit the button.

"Yeah?" A male voice answered the intercom, which took Amy back for a second before realizing that it was probably Charles O'Conner, another member of Congress. From what she remembered, he had been with her at the shootout in Orange.

"We're here to see Georgia," Amy replied politely.

There was a pause for a second. "You with the Japanese government?"  
"Yes, that would be us."

There was no vocal reply, but the door buzzer came to life, ringing for a second as the door was unlocked for them. Amy and Mina stepped through and walked a couple of steps to the elevator. Getting in, Mina pressed the "three" button and waited for the elevator to take them to their floor.

"How do you think this is going to go?" she asked Amy.

"No idea. But if we can pull this off, we save a lot of lives today."

Ding. The elevator doors opened, and the two of them walked out of the elevator and looked for room 302. It was down the hall, several feet away and to the left.

"Okay, here goes nothing." Amy took a deep breath and knocked on the door.  
"Come in," Georgia's voice resonated back.

Mina opened the door and was greeted by the sight of a Colt 1911 being pointed at her head by Representative O'Conner.

"Charles!" Georgia snapped at the pot-belled man.

O'Conner gave them a look, making sure that they were who they said they were, then put the gun away in a holster near his arm.

"Sorry about that," he said, with Amy and Mina glaring at him. "Can't be too careful these days."

Amy took a look around the room. It was a sparse room, with a couple of potted plants, a coffee table and couch, some chairs, and a table for eating at. On the couch sat another woman that Amy didn't recognize and another man. They both got up when they entered.

"You must be…Amy?" the woman asked, approaching her with an outstretched hand. "Senator Gloria Patterson."

"Nice to meet you…Senator," Amy replied, choosing her words carefully. Patterson turned to Mina and introduced herself to her as well.

"Mina, nice to meet you," she echoed from Amy. The man also greeted them. He looked about in his mid-fifties, prim and proper with slicked back hair (or what remained of his hair), a nice suit, and average weight. A consummate politician.

"Senator James Plum, nice to meet you." He shook both their hands. Probably not since the American Revolution had so many influential and powerful people had met in such humble surroundings. But when matters were as serious as this, you didn't have much choice in that.

"I know both of you must have gotten a lot of trouble to get here, so we'll get right to business," Patterson (ironically) said to both of them. She sat back down on the couch, along with Plum. Mina and Amy remained standing, and Georgia and O'Conner sat down in the remaining chairs.

"Senator," Amy said formally, reaching into her purse and obtaining her tablet computer. "This is a recording from a source we had detaining the operations of the Nakanishi Group in a bid to force their dominance on the United States and the world at large." She played the video, translating all the while.

Both Senators looked nervous and confused, with O'Conner simply nodded his head.

"So, they're planning to nuke Washington,"

"That's why this speech was called," Plum added. "The President, all of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Chiefs of Staff…everyone."

"They can destroy everyone and start anew," Amy said. "But we're putting a stop to that. We have the nuke."

Everyone in the room breathed out on that one.

"Wait, is it here?" Georgia asked, nervously.

"No, it's hidden in Manassas Battlefield…" Amy began, but was cut off by the sudden argument that sparked up between the Congress members.

"You mean, Bull Run," O'Conner and Patterson said at the same time.

"No, it's Manassas," Plum and Georgia replied, again at the same time. All of them looked at each other awkwardly before continuing at the business at hand.

"Right…" Amy continued, wondering why it was such a big deal. She knew of the American Civil War, but that was all in the past now. "We have the nuke hidden here. But as you know, there's another one in New Jersey. We have the location and my superiors have contacted the FBI, but we haven't had much luck so far; they refuse to believe us."

Patterson nodded. "I'll call an audience with the President."

Mina looked at her, with some suspicion. "We just met, and gave you some evidence that may or may not be true. Are you just going to believe us that quickly?"

Patterson shrugged. "I've been harassed by Nakanishi goons all year, and it doesn't surprise that they would plan something like this. It's obvious that this company needs to go down, but beforehand, we need to get these terrorist attacks stopped. Now, if you don't mind…"

She reached in her pocket for her cell phone and dialed a number. "Jorge, it's me. Yes, I know you're busy, but I need to speak with the President. I know she's busy…it's really important. Five minutes? That's all I need. Four O'clock? That'll be fine, thanks."

Patterson hung up the phone. Amy wondered how one could have so much power; with one phone call, she had an audience with the most powerful person on the face of the Earth.

"Uh…thanks," Mina said, as much in awe as Amy was about the power that Patterson wielded.

"Not a problem," Patterson replied, nodding her head in agreement. "Let's get our game plan together so we can convince the president."

"Of course," Amy said. She hit a few more buttons on the tablet. "This is the location of the bomb, and from what we've discovered about Nakanishi operations…"

* * *

Things were quickly falling apart on Nephrite's end. After the failure to pursue the hijacked vehicle, his PMC had gotten in trouble with some police officers for brandishing weapons out in the open. A few phone calls later, the problem had been resolved but it had slowed them down. Now, Nephrite was somewhere in Crystal City, trying to track down the two SAILOR members that had taken his goddamned nuke.

"Change of plans, Beryl," Nephrite said into his (new) cell phone.

"What is the problem?"

"The WMDs have been compromised. We will not be able to use them for this mission."

"Jesus fucking Christ, why the fuck did you have fucking LOSE THEM?!" Her voice screeched over the phone, and Nephrite cringed at the shill noise emanating out of the phone. He might need a new one after this, if things went really downhill from there.

"We didn't lose them. It was the SAILOR Team." He said it in a calm voice, but on the inside

"You know, I'm thinking that this entire business with creating the SAILOR team was a complete waste of our time," she snarled over the phone. "They're a complete liability now. After all of this is over, you need to take them out."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps my ass," Beryl said. "Fine, here's what we're going…you're going to do. Take the security force and kill those parasite members of Congress."

"But won't that blow our cover?" Nephrite asked, the tone in his voice.

"We can always blame it on someone else!" Beryl snapped back. "Do I have to do all of the fucking thinking around here? Better yet, why don't you blame it on the SAILOR Team? Two birds with one stone, hmm?"  
You're not the one who has to deal with the consequences, Nephrite thought, but held his tongue.

"Huh…? What was that…?" Nephrite heard her talking to someone else in the room. "Nephrite, I'm going to have to get back with you on that, we have a situation developing here…"

She hung up, leaving Nephrite wondering what the hell was going on here. Things seemed to be getting out of hand extremely fast, and he was afraid that the already out of control situation was going to get worse. Nephrite sighed and went back to his vehicle.

There were three SUVs in the parking lot near Cesar's Diner, a popular joint for the locals. Nephrite walked over to the middle one, double parked near one of the other restaurants in the strip mall.

"What was that all about?" one of his "new" commanders said to him.

"It's nothing, Kruger," Nephrite replied. "Get the PMC up to the capitol. We've got some work to do."

"All units, prepare to move to the Capitol Building," Kruger said over the radio. "What are we doing there?"

"What a lot of people have wanted to do," Nephrite commented bitterly, although he appreciated the circumstances of what he was about to commit. He didn't need to say what needed to be done after that.

"Sounds great to me," Kruger replied, tapping the driver of the SUV to get a move on. "But won't that…"

"I realize it, I know," Nephrite dismissed his subordinate's worries like they were nothing, but he knew that they had merit. If they went in and started shooting up the place, then things would get bad and everything would point back to Nakanishi. But if they didn't act now, this chance to start anew would be gone forever, nuke or no nuke. He took a deep breath in. This was something that had to be done, whether he liked it or not.

Molly flashed before his eyes for a second, her curly hair and goo-goo eyes blinking at him, her smile penetrating the cold air…

"Sir, what are your orders when we get to the Capitol building?" Kruger's voice interrupted him. "We can't just start shooting randomly."

"Have your men change into civilian clothing, but use those balaclavas so that they can't identify us, at least by sight."

"Of course."

"Split the PMC up into two groups; one that will take the Capitol and one that will take the White House. After we have finished eliminating all targets, we will withdraw from the area and meet…here."

He pointed to a small town in Maryland. Crofton? Kruger had never heard of that town, but whatever. Nephrite seemed to know what he was doing despite the original plan completely going to shit.

"Then, we can work things out there," he continued stoically.

"Understood."

"Also, tell the unit stationed near the Pentagon to start hitting the place when we attack. I can send some more of those 'militia' units to attack that place, but they'll be on their own while we deal with the Capitol building."

"Got it." Kruger started to radio instructions to everyone, while Nephrite sat back in the car seat, hoping that this hastily thrown together plan would have a decent chance of success.

The convoy rolled on, toward its destination.

* * *

"That's it then," Amy said, finishing up her briefing. It had gone on for awhile, but this was to be expected; there was a lot of Nakanishi data that had been coming in from the raid on their HQ, and it was being fed to them in real time.

"Jesus, this is really bad," Plum noted. "I always knew that these guys were bastards, but this…this is like out of some sci-fi movie or something."

"I don't know how else to put it," Amy replied. "It's bad, but we have a chance to stop all of this madness before it even starts."

Georgia nodded. "We can do it." That brought a smile from O'Conner; he admired the newbie's spunkiness. It reminded him of a simpler time…a time when there were no big corporations looming around every corner, when politics got something done, when…ah, what was this old man to do?

"Okay, it's time," Patterson said to them, checking her watch. "We should get a move on."

The six of them got into their vehicles, with Amy and Mina riding in their SUV, and the other Congress members riding in another SUV, taking point on their way to the White House. The drive would take about thirty minutes or so.

Mina wondered what kind of furniture that the White House had; maybe it was all regal and all that jazz, like those palaces in Europe. She quickly reminded herself that Europeans had more history than Americans, and that while beautiful, the White House in its current form was less than a hundred years old. Hmm. What did they serve for dinner? Macaroni and Cheese? Mmmm…perhaps some jelly beans and stuff as well.

Amy however, was thinking about what she would say to the President of the United States. How would this sound to her, coming from a foreign agent, supposedly on their side but in fact, engaged in operations to undermine them? How the hell could she explain something like this? Why was she doing it? Could she even muster the courage to…to do this? Wasn't this treason? Amy continued to panic about it until they reached Pennsylvania Avenue.

As they approached the White House, Amy felt a lump in her throat. This was it. No turning back now.


	41. Chapter XXXIX: Point Break

**Chapter XXXIX: Point Break**

**1600hrs, 16 December 2013, The White House, Washington D.C, United States.**

_"Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons, and to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid." President James Marshall, Air Force One_

* * *

President Elizabeth Hamilton shuffled some papers on her desk in the Oval Office. For being the first woman in the Executive Branch, she was pretty chill, the thinking, analyzing bureaucrat that she had been trained as until some higher ups asked her to run for the Presidency after a short term as US Senator. The entire primary season had been a mess, with all the extremist candidates crowding out the more moderate ones, but above the fray, the she had managed to prevail. She had made it a point not to wear a red suit, and had a voice coach to help tone down her slight Virginian accent. It had been a tiring year of campaigning, followed by her first full year in office. The desk that she was stacking papers on was from the "Camelot" era of JFK's time, as the president could request any desk from any past era to be brought into the Oval Office during his or rather, her term. The desk actually had a name; it was called the Resolute desk, after the ship that had explored the Artic in the later 19th century. Almost every president in the modern era had used it, so why rock the boat on that?

She hoped that she didn't suffer JFK's fate, however.

"This looks like a good speech," she said to herself, looking over the notes that had been prepared for tonight's session before the House and Senate. It was a suggestion by a number of House and Senator members that she start an annual Christmas address to both Houses and the nation; it would be, of course, shorter than the State of the Union. It would be more pep-talkish and celebratory; God knows that the United States needed that right now.

She was however, looking forward to the break so she could get away from the stressful job of running the nation for a bit.

Knock knock. Someone was at the door to the Oval Office.

"Come in," she said cheerfully. Hamilton looked up to see the White House Chief of Staff, Jorge Ramirez walk in, with a troubled look on his face.

"What is it Jorge?" she asked him.

He was a silent for a second, trying to find the words to speak. That was a rare occurrence.

"Jorge, is everything alright?"

He finally found the words to speak.

"Madame President…" he said. "I just got told the most incredible story of my entire life…and you're not going to believe who's telling it."

"Who?"

Jorge went back outside, and brought in Senators Gloria Patterson and James Plum, Representatives Georgia Clemens and Charles O'Conner, and two young women, one with blonde hair and one with…blue hair?

"Madame President," Senator Patterson said, trying to be as calm as possible. "You have to cancel the speech tonight and get out of Washington D.C."

The President blinked at her. The Senator and her had their differences yes, but why cancel the speech?

"Because you're in grave danger," the blue haired woman said to her. "The entire nation is."

POTUS blinked at that. "And you are?"

"My name is Amy. She's Mina," jabbing her thumb at the blonde. She gave a toothy smile.

"It's an honor to meet you," she said, bowing slightly.

"We're…we're with the Japanese government," Amy stuttered. Being in the presence of the Japanese PM? That was nothing. But being in front of the leader of _the_ most powerful nation on Earth? Well, at least it gave a little bit more pressure. "Our department…"

"Who is 'our department?'" the President asked her, trying to keep her anger in check. What the hell was going on? "Why haven't the Japanese government addressed this through diplomatic channels?"  
"That's because the Japanese government has been compromised by outside influences," Mina said. "You know about the Nakanishi Group?"

"Of course. There's not a day that goes by without their lobbyists bugging my Chief of Staff for some face time."

"They effectively control the foreign policy of Japan," Amy continued. "And as of late, me and a special team of operatives have been conducting special operations around the world to enforce their agenda."

President Hamilton blinked. For all the resources that the United States possessed, the CIA, the NIA, the DIA, the NSA, the intelligence branches of all the military forces, domestic law enforcement and good-old fashioned diplomacy, she had never had any inkling of what Amy was telling her. She went on to explain the operations in South Korea, China, Taiwan, India, Sudan…all of it, spilling out all of the secrets of the SAILOR team. Amy did keep the specifics of the Sudan operation to a minimum, however. That could be bad for their image, something that they didn't need right now in front of the President.

"Wait, you're saying that you're part of a special operations team that goes around and basically kills off the opposition to the Nakanishi Group." Hamilton's brown eyes narrowed on that statement.

"Yeah, that's about it," Amy sheepishly said, trying to avoid the president's accusing glare.

"And why would you join such an organization?" the President accused.

"We didn't have a choice in the matter," Mina explained hastily. "We were randomly chosen by an agent working by the Nakanishi Group to facilitate the development of this organization."

"I find that very hard to believe, Mina," POTUS replied, her brown eyes analyzing the girls standing in front of her. She wondered why the hell Jorge had brought them into her office. POTUS started to motion to her COS to escort the agents out and have them detained by the Secret Service, but then Georgia spoke up.

"Believe it or not," Georgia interrupted, "They have proof of what is about to happen, and I believe them."

"Representative Clemens," the President replied. "I understand your concern, but I cannot go off on the word of these two foreign agents, who are in violation of immigration and diplomatic law, and give me information about a terrorist attack that the CIA, FBI, NSA and other intelligence agencies have not found."

"That's because we're all under the influence of Nakanishi. Even your Vice President is under their control."

"They have much influence," POTUS conceded, "But they do not own me."

"Are you sure about that?" Amy interrupted. "What about your campaign? Who ran that? Who gave you the infrastructure to run it? Your current administration, how many department run Nakanishi software, or use Nakanishi made equipment?" She pointed to the T800 computer laying on her desk. "Where did that come from, hmm?"

Even POTUS couldn't deny that fact.

"Alright, fine. We use a lot of Nakanishi computers and stuff. But what about Microsoft? A huge chunk of computers use their operating system and they aren't planning massive terrorist attacks."

"This is different. Nakanishi is run by maniacal people who can't see that their actions will destroy the world and their profits with it. Other companies are run by people who can be reasoned with, shown the facts, make the proper decisions."

Well, most of the time, Amy thought to herself, thinking back to the 2007 recession, and the Japanese Bubble economy of the early 1990s.

"But the fact still remains, you do not have any proof…"

"We have a video," Mina protested. "it shows the Nakanishi leadership plotting all of these terrorist attacks and planning to gain financially from them!"

"That doesn't prove anything these days," POTUS snapped back. "Anyone can make a video. I need some proof, of which you don't have." She kept glaring at the Congressmembers in the room; she was going to have a nice long talk with each of them about this incident after she had the Secret Service take these two loonies away.

Amy and Mina breathed in. They hoped that it wouldn't come to this point, but it looked like it was heading that way.

"Madame President, we have the nuclear weapon with us."

She looked at them, incredulous of the information that they were speaking of.

"Why the hell would you bring that nuclear weapon here!" she asked.

"It's not here," Mina quickly reassured her. "It's located here." She took Amy's tablet computer and showed her a map. It was located at Manassas.

"And how do I know if it's not a trap?"

"You're just going to have to trust them," O'Conner spoke up, the first time he had done so in this meeting with the President.

"I trust them too," Patterson said.

Hamilton glared at everyone in the room now. This was going too far…she reached for the phone to call the Secret Service agents again until Georgia stepped forward.

"I've got an idea then," Georgia said. "Me and Charles will go out with a security detail. If we're telling the truth, then you can get confirmation from us and your team. If not, then you have all the perpetrators under guard already."

POTUS considered the options. She looked at the family photographs on the resolute desk. Her two children and the first gentleman looked back her. This was utterly ridiculous; four members of Congress and two foreign agents come into her office and start spouting all this nonsense about nuclear weapons and terrorist attacks and a. But maybe it was so ridiculous that it was true. She could throw them out of her office, but sometimes the President has to make decisions based on what little information that he or she might have, no matter the circumstances.

"Fine. I will get a Secret Service detail that will escort Representative O'Conner and Clemens to the spot where this supposed WMD is located. If you're lying about this though…"

She didn't have to explain the consequences.

"Understood, Madame President," O'Conner replied to her. "Georgia."

The two them left as the President called for a Secret Service detail to be sent to the map coordinates that the nuclear device was located.

She put down the phone as the Secret Service team rolled out, Georgia and O'Conner uncomfortably nestled between two very serious looking agents.

"So…" Georgia started to say to O'Conner, but the agents just glared at them to shut them up.

Georgia wondered about the series of events that had led them to this point; an uneventful subcommittee meeting, a drive to Orange, an email…it was all a blur. She gazed out of the window, looking at the passing cars and watching the landscape slowly turn from urban to rural.

Forty very awkward minutes later, they arrived at Manassas. It was peaceful almost; the snow glistened from the trees, shorn of their leaves and standing starkly naked in the cold winter air. The convoy of black Suburbans came to a stop as they turned onto the road that Amy and Mina had visited earlier that day.

Georgia and O'Conner waited anxiously in the SUV while the agents checked out the location. The irony of the location was not lost on them; one of the first battles of the American Civil War, it was were both North and South realized that the American Civil War (or for some people, the War of Northern Aggression), would be a long and bloody affair.

"It's here!" one of them yelled out. He took out his Blackberry, and snapped a picture of it to be uploaded to POTUS.

"Thank god," O'Conner said, sitting back in his seat. Georgia breathed out, glad and saddened at the same time. That meant that there was still one more nuke out there, and that the plan to destroy the United States government was in place.

* * *

The President received a picture from the Secret Service in no time. Amy had to speak up about the other nuke, or else this was all for naught. She would have done so earlier, but the President would have merely dismissed her information as mere conjecture, even with the emails found in Orange, VA. Anyone could make up an email, forge a signature, and shoot a grainy video of some people sitting in a conference room.

"Madame president, this is not the only one."

"What do you mean?" Hamilton asked, looking at the image of the nuclear weapon in front of her.

"There's another one at a meat processing plant in Paterson, New Jersey. Some of my people have been trying to get local law enforcement there, but there's no guarantee…"

Amy didn't get to finish her sentence before POTUS had picked up the phone and started barking orders into it. Having dodged one bullet, she was going to make for damn sure that there was not going to be another chance for the Nakanishi Group to execute their plans.

"Jorge, I need you to contact the FBI office in New Jersey and tell them that we have an Empty Quiver situation at a meat processing plant in Paterson, New Jersey. I'll send over the directions, but they might have already had left the plant headed into New York."

She put down the phone for a second, then snapped it up again. "Jorge, get the JCS and the NSC up here…no, wait. Have them meet somewhere else. Yes, that place, that'll be fine. We need to get everyone out of this city…what do you mean they're all congregated in Congress, what time is it?"

POTUS looked at her watch. It was 1650.

"Shit!"

She looked at Amy and Mina sitting on one of the couches. Patterson and Plum were still there as well, chatting nervously amongst themselves. POTUS ignored them for now; they would come into play later when she got around to purging every last bit of Nakanishi equipment from the US Government.

"You two have a vehicle?" she asked them.

"Yes," Amy said back, surprised that the President would ask them a question like that. "It's got a minigun in the back of it."

POTUS reminded herself to admonish the Secret Service about that, but at least these two were on her side.

"I need you two to get to the Capitol building and get people out of there," she ordered with conviction. "Take whoever you need…no wait." She picked up the phone again. "This is President. Yeah. Get the Capitol police to clear everyone out of the Congress building…what do you mean, there's no Capitol Police at the Capitol building? There's…"

She stopped for a second before going on. "It's that security company, isn't it?" POTUS took a sharp breath in. "Goddamn. I'll get back to you."

Hamilton turned to Amy and Mina. "Consider all Nakanishi Security a threat that are to be dealt with immediately. Get to the Capitol building and clear everyone out of there."

Amy and Mina nodded. "We'll take care of the threat." She still couldn't believe the President of the United States of America would trust them in this type of situation, but from her point of view, she had no reason not to. And with the Nakanishi goons everywhere…well, that made things a lot more complicated.

"Jorge, have the Capitol Police get to the Capitol building immediately, the Nakanishi Group is about to do something…no, I don't know what it is, but it's going to be bad. Thanks."

* * *

At the meat processing plant, the men were already started to pack up the W80 nuclear weapon. They were closer to New York than Orange was to Washington D.C, and could take a little bit more time. They didn't need to get anywhere specific, not even close to Wall Street because the resulting EMP would destroy all unshielded electronics and equipment. If it was in a residential area, great. If it was in a commercial area, great. Such was the simplicity and beauty of nuclear warfare. No finesse required, just point and shoot.

That is, if they had the chance to get the nuclear bomb to Manhattan. Five FBI cars pulled up outside and surrounded the place. A SWAT team from the local police department pulled up as well, ready to go in. Within a minute, they were ready, and from all sides, FBI and SWAT team units swarmed in.

A massive firefight broke out between the terrorists and the police, but unlike in Orange, there was no Nakanishi PMC to swipe away annoying pests like law enforcement or the FBI. All ten terrorists were killed in the firefight, and a FBI agent was killed in the crossfire, the first of many American casualties today. But the nuclear weapon was safe.

The time was 1700. They had just made it.

"Madame President," Jorge said to her fifteen minutes later. "We have the second nuclear weapon. All the nuclear weapons have been accounted for and are now being transported to safe locations."

"Thank God," POTUS said.

"Madame President." She looked up to see Jorge come into the room with some Secret Service agents. "We need to get you out of here if something goes down," he said, a slight Texan drawl reminding her where he was born.

"I understand." POTUS got up from her chair, but was immediately knocked down by large explosion.

* * *

"You getting this?" Kruger said, leaning on the side of the SUV, his FN SCAR slung behind his shoulder.

"Yes," Nephrite replied, looking stoically where that nuclear weapon was located. "But there's nothing we can do about it."

"How long do you think it'll take them to discover that we can listen to their transmissions?"

"Not long. We need to make the best of this opportunity as we can. Send some of those 'militia' folk to that location in Manassas and try to get some of our people there as well to attack and retrieve the WMD."

"And then what?" Kruger asked. "Our cover will be long blown by then."  
"Doesn't matter, if we nuke this area, it'll still have the intended effect, just without the original plan in place."

Kruger nodded. "Of course." He did a radio check, and all his units sounded off that they were in position.

"Are your men in their civilian clothes?"

"Yeah, they're in civvies." Of course, that was in complete violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949, but then again, no one seemed to pay attention to that sort of thing nowadays. That was why the PMC could exist. Men (and yes, almost always men), with no life, no hope after the military (or maybe even with no military experience) could join up for the big bucks, guard boring locations in the middle of nowhere land, and maybe run some illicit operations on the side for some more money.

Nephrite sighed and looked out at the place that they were going to attack. "Then you may begin."

Kruger nodded, and hit the transmit button the radio. "This is Sjaal One, Sjaal One, all units are go for operation, I say again, all units are go for operation."

A large group of Hummers and SUVs converged on the Capitol building and began their assault. A second group of SUVs and Hummers also converged on the White House, the mercenaries in them reading their weapons for the deadly business before them.

Mina and Amy had just pulled up next to the National Air and Space Museum when the assault had just begun.

"Shit!" Mina exclaimed, looking at all the SUVs swarming toward the Capitol. "Those must be the Nakanishi guys! We gotta stop them!"

"On it!" Amy hit the gas and accelerated toward the front of the group of vehicles. They didn't take notice at first, because the vehicle was a Nakanishi owned one, and perhaps they had been given orders by the commander to move up, or they were just getting into position. She continued to accelerate down Independence Avenue, past the Nakanishi vehicles, and heading toward the lead one.

Nephrite looked out of his window to see the sight of the vehicle that had been taken earlier today driving up right beside him, on the left.

"What the fuck…" he said to himself. "Hostile contact!" he screamed to the others in the SUV.

"Wait, what?" Kruger said, looking up from his map. "That's a Nakanishi Vehicle!"

Nephrite didn't wait to respond. Instead, he rolled down his window and brandished his Calico SMG. Taking aim, he fired a couple of rounds at the vehicle.

"Mina!" Amy yelled, but she was already rolling down her window and pointing her M4 out of it. She fired back. From where she was located, Mina thought she saw a flash of red. The window rolled back up and the SUV fell back, slowing down and letting the others pass. By this time, the others had wisened up and had started to pursue their vehicle, the occupants leaning out and firing all along. Mina leaned out of the window and started to fire back.

"Get on the Minigun!" she yelled, trying to dodge traffic and bullets at the same time.

"I can't!" Mina yelled . "Too many civvies!" There were people too out there, either on holiday, doing some sightseeing, traveling from work…a Minigun would cause more problems that it would solve. Already, Amy had seen a person get hit from the stray fire that these guys were putting out.

"Fuck," Amy hissed to herself. She continued to drive.

* * *

"Bring it down here!"

One of the Secret Service agents was waving to a UH60 Blackhawk hovering above. The helicopter had been on a routine training mission until a flash order from the Commander in Chief herself had ordered them to stop at this location and to take on a special package.

"I'm glad that they're getting that thing out of here," O'Conner muttered to himself, patting his left jacket pocket for his flask. He took it out and drank a shot or so.

"Jesus, I thought you gave up that stuff," Georgia said. Take the Irishman out of Ireland, but you can't take out his Irishness.

"Just a celebratory drink," he smiled.

A couple of agents hefted the WMD to the helicopter, where one of the crew chiefs helped to put it aboard. Another agent hopped in the helicopter to keep it under guard. The crew chief was not happy about this arrangement, and started to argue with the agent, which brought the pilot and the co-pilot in on the argument and the rest of the agents in as well.

"Take the goddamn nuke," O'Conner groaned. "Stay here," he told Georgia. He put his flask away and started to walk over to the helicopter.

About a couple hundred feet away, a group of men in winter camouflage spotted the commotion and noted that this was the target that had been sent to them. There were about fifty of them, all survivalists and neo-Confederates, organized into a militia termed the "1st Virginia Volunteers Regiment," a throwback to the regiments of the American Civil War. They had been trained and armed by the Nakanishi PMC, who had quite literally, stumbled upon them when they had been out on exercises in the Virginia countryside. The training had consisted mostly of pep talks, some weapons exercises, and a couple of Youtube videos. To the Nakanishi PMC, they were just another tool in their plan of massive attacks that would occur on 16 December 2013. To the 1st VVR, they were more powerful than they could have ever imagined. Now armed with powerful Bushmaster ACRs, AT4s, FN Minimis and M21 sniper rifles, they were ready to take on any threat.

Well, in their minds anyway.

One of them popped open a AT4 and aimed it toward the helicopter on the ground. It was a perfect shot…for someone who knew what they were doing. The rocketeer failed to do a couple of things; first, he did not clear the backblast area behind him, in which a couple of men were kneeling, not paying attention. Secondly, the rocketeer failed to properly brace himself in the usage of the AT4, although a recoilless weapon, proper care should be taken in firing the weapon, mainly having a firm grip on the AT4, aiming down the sights and maintaining a field of fire on the target. Third, the rocketeer failed to take stock of his situation, solely focusing on the helicopter and not thinking about the consequences of firing a rocket a WMD. He at least took both safeties off, and fired the 84mm rocket toward the helicopter. The men caught in the backblast were injured, suffering from major burns from the heat and blast that the AT4 produced.

Thankfully, he missed, sending the rocket to the right and exploding on impact with the ground.

Unfortunately for O'Conner, that miss turned him into another statistic for that day. There was nothing left of Representative Charles O'Conner after the explosion besides a couple of limbs and some boots. The helicopter immediately took off, resolving the argument between the crew chief and the agents. Gunfire immediately erupted from the nearby treeline, and the agents returned fire. Some managed to get hits even at the extreme range of their pistols; all Secret Service Agents are trained to be marksmen. But it was obvious that they were outnumbered and outgunned, and with their mission finished, it was time to get the hell out of there.

Georgia looked on, stunned that Charles was just there…and now he wasn't.

"Get down!" An agent tackled and shoved her into the SUV that she had been riding earlier. The agents scrambled into the SUVs and booked it out of there, scurrying back to Washington D.C. Georgia looked back, dumbfounded at the situation.

"He was right there…" she mumbled. "He was right there…"

* * *

"Madame President!"

Jorge's voice brought POTUS out of her daze. She looked around her; the Oval Office was in flames; the desk was intact however. It had probably had saved her life. Hamilton tilted her head slightly to the right…there was Plum and Patterson. They were both dead, their eyes lifeless.

"We need to get you out of here!" a Secret Service agent yelled. "SANDSTONE is on the move!"

Hamilton barely remembered being pulled up and shoved around. Gunfire resonated in the background, with the Secret Service detail surrounding her, forming a living meat shield that would protect her from the bullets flying about. The agents on the roof of the White House, as expected, fended off the first wave of attackers, sending them and their vehicles scurrying down Pennsylvania Avenue in order to regroup.

"We don't have much time," Hamilton heard one of the agents say into his radio. "Hello…? Goddammit, the radio is out!"

She vaguely remembered being shoved into the SUV.

The three car convoy moved out, with the lead one being armed with a Minigun. The agent inside popped out and laid down covering fire, block by block until he ran out of ammunition. They stopped for nobody, not even the random person that was unlucky enough to be in their way. The convoy just kept driving and driving until it got to Andrews Air Force Base, some thirty minutes away, where the VC-25 that the President usually traveled in was on the tarmac, ready to go.

* * *

Amy and Mina had been in a running gun battle with the other Nakanishi vehicles until the Capitol building came into full view.

"Oh shit," Mina said. "This is…this is not good."

The Senate Wing was on fire, with flames shooting out of many windows. Mina saw someone jump from one of the floors and disappear. The House Wing was blackened by several explosions, and two RPGs flew from somewhere north of the building and detonated against the exterior. People ran about, screaming, trying to get away from their attackers. A Nakanishi Hummer came into view, its tires squealing against the asphalt as it tried to cut off their SUV.

"Now can you use the fucking Minigun?!" Amy yelled.

"On it!"

Amy brought the SUV near the back entrance to the Capitol building, where the vehicles for the important dignitaries were held.

Mina got into the gunner's seat, and looked around for the release button that would pop the gun out.

At 3000 rounds a minute, the air cooled, six barreled, electric driven M134 Minigun spat 50 7.62mm x 51mm rounds every second, saturating the target with a storm of bullets that would kill, maim, disable, or do a variety of things to make sure that the target would not get back up. Mina held down the triggering mechanism for three seconds, sending 150 rounds in total into the nearest Hummer. Despite the armored plating that the Hummer possessed, the amount of rounds being fired and the open windows guaranteed that someone would die. The Minigun is not a precise weapon; it doesn't even have sights to aim at the target. Instead, tracer rounds, every third round, would be fired leading the gunner onto the target. It even looked a like a laser, much to Mina's delight. The resulting sound was a distinctive "Brrrrrrrrmm!" as there were too many rounds being fired to hear them individually. She swept a row of SUVs that had set up a blocking position near the rear entrance, firing at anything that moved.

Within a couple of seconds, several PMC soldiers were down and several people managed to escape the onslaught. A couple more minutes passed, then the armored vehicles of Senators, foreign dignitaries and military personnel started to escape, held back by the torrent of fire that the PMC had been pouring onto the Senate building.

Annoyed by their appearance, the remaining PMC soldiers started to close in on the Amy and Mina's position, trying to destroy them.

"Mina, at three o'clock!" Amy screamed out, pointing out the driver's side and firing the last of her Cx4 ammo off. A couple more SUVs screamed in toward their position, the occupants firing their weapons at anything that moved. Mina turned the Minigun and fired a short burst at the convoy. One of the SUVs turned over, having its' tires shredded. The other two SUVs backed off, and started fleeing in the other direction.

Amy heard the sound of approaching sirens as the Capitol Police finally got their act together and started their relief efforts. This was obviously faster than the PMC had expected, and they started to withdraw from the area.

She saw a wounded soldier crawl out of overturned vehicle. This was their break; they could get some more information about the details of their operation and the whereabouts of that bastard, Nephrite.

"Mina, I'm taking us to that SUV over there!"

"I'll keep a lookout."

Amy drove over to the overturned vehicle, making sure that there were no more threats about. Gunfire continued in the background, and the occasional explosion boomed in the distance. Seeing no more threats in the immediate area, she stopped the SUV by the wounded man and got out.

"Where's Nephrite!" Amy shouted at the wounded soldier, walking over. He was obviously in pain, and with the blood loss from his wounds, he wouldn't last very long without medical care.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" he snarled back. His accent sounded like he was from South Africa. Mina appeared behind Amy, holding the first aid kit from the SUV. He looked at the aid, then turned away.

"We can at least treat your wounds," Mina said, softly. She was almost drowned out by some gunfire, presumably the police and the PMC getting into a shootout down the street.

Amy glared at Mina, but that was probably the best way to get information right now. Mina handed Amy the kit, but she stopped before treating him.

"We'll treat you, but you have to tell where Nephrite is."

The man laughed bitterly now, realizing the situation that was upon him. "Sure. I'm done for anyway. That wound will kill me in a couple of hours, if not sooner. And I'll just spend the rest of my days in jail anyway if I survive."

"Where is he?" Amy asked again, this time more nicely and without all the anger running through her voice.

"We were planning to meet at this small town in Maryland…ah…" He coughed and winced in pain as Amy opened up the first aid kit and got some bandages out; she noticed a small tube of gel that said "HEALING SOLUTION: Mk I". She wasn't going to give him that treatment though. She dressed an abdominal wound, doing the best she could with the medical training that she had. The blood was turning black, which meant the liver had been punctured and was spilling toxic bile out into his body. He would be dead either way.

"…it's um…Crofton. Yeah, that's the one. Some wildlife preservation reserve or some shit like that. Never heard of it though."

"Alright," Amy said. She got some morphine syrettes from the first aid kit and administered one. The soldier gasped as the painkiller took hold, relaxing him and dropping his blood pressure dramatically. Amy gave a couple more to him, pressing them into his hand.

"Here you go."

"Thanks." The soldier nodded in reply, and through his quickly weakening state, injected another syrette into his leg.

Amy stood up and took the first aid kit with her. She gave one last look at the PMC soldier, who was losing consciousness rapidly.

"Looks like we have our work cut out for us," Mina muttered, looking at the burning Washington D.C skyline.

Amy just nodded and got back into the SUV and started it up again, the weight of the entire mission on her shoulders.


	42. Chapter XL: rm –rf

**Chapter XL: rm –rf ***

**2200hrs, 16 December 2013, Near Herefordshire College of Technology, Hereford, United Kingdom**

_"If you have ever done any security work, and it did not involve the concept of "network of trust", it wasn't security work, it was masturbation. I don't know what you were doing. But trust me, it's the only way you can do security, it's the only way you can do development." Linus Torvalds_

_"He's in a constant state of dumbassness right now…what the fuck is he doing now man?!" Centerstrain01, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier playthrough._

* * *

Anne and Alan lay in their loft flat, exhausted after an hour's worth of love-making. Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" played softly in the background…well, as softly as any Lady Gaga song could go anyway.

"You're getting soft," Anne chastised Alan, breathing in and out rather quickly.

"Oh hush," Alan replied. "You enjoyed it."

"What time is it dear?" Anne asked.

Alan looked at his watch. "Shit, it's almost ten-thirty," he muttered.

"What time is it exactly?" Alan had a bad habit of exaggerating the time, due to his former stint with the French Foreign Legion. All that military training...well, sometimes it paid off, mainly in bed though; he was still in good shape.

Alan sighed. "It's ten o'clock," he said, reluctantly.

"Dammit, we could have been fucking each other for fifteen more minutes!" Anne teased him.

"Sorry, we need to get going on this part of the operation. Otherwise…"

"Oh alright, I'll fire up the computers."

Both of them hopped out of their bed and put on their clothes (more like their underwear), and headed over to the other part of their flat, which held no less than five computers, with ten monitors, and several different partitions per computer, holding virtual machines for every server and desktop OS imaginable.

Anne and Alan were contractors for Nakanishi Europe, which had paid a large grant to the Herefordshire College of Technology for research and development. In return, Anne and Alan were allowed to use their equipment without question and any resources they needed to do the bidding of the Nakanishi Group.

Alan went over to his workstation and started hitting the power buttons to all the CPUs and monitors to turn them on. This of course, drew a lot of power but they could afford the monthly bill, which was sometimes ran into the tens of thousands of pounds. Ann went over to her workstation and started to do the same, but not after she had grabbed a couple of Mountain Dews from the fridge and passing one to Alan.

Anne chided Alan over his use of Ubuntu, which was pretty easy to use and wasn't so intimidating as some of the other Linux based operating systems. Ann said "screw it" and customized her own kernel, based on her own needs for data manipulation and control, allowing her to access raw data quickly and efficiently, without the need for shiny GUIs and all that stuff. Alan did that too, for his security work, but he liked to use Ubuntu just because it was so damn easy; it worked like Windows without all the hassle. Well, usually, for the most part.

"Alright, I'm up," he said to Ann, typing some commands into the command line.

"Give me a second," Ann replied, opening up some of the virtual machines that would allow her to access the backdoor program to some of the Department of Defense's computer networks.

"I'm all ready on my end," she called out in a sing-song voice to him.

"Okay, let's do this."

"Leeerrrooyy Jennnnkinnnss!" Anne shouted out, to dramatic effect. Alan glared at her and she got to work.

First, Anne made sure that the backdoor program was working and in order. It was, having been undetected by the security sweeps and the constant monitoring by the US Government. Of course, it also helped to have multibillion dollar contracts and to provide the majority of the security software to them anyway. They had managed to lock down the DOD network so tight that virtually all traffic coming in and out on their network was completely secure. In a binary world, that might seem impossible (well, it was impossible, since everything has only two functions; on or off), but somehow, the Nakanishi Group, America and Europe had managed to create a perfectly secure system. Of course, there were some glaring flaws, like the ability of administrators to maintain complete control over their users, basically rendering the computers they were using into dumb terminals. And that everything was on the cloud. And that everything was basically proprietary goods of the Nakanishi Group, but hey, that didn't matter when you had a good deal of Congressmen in your pockets. To make it look like a cyberattack, preferably from another nation (Anne and Alan couldn't agree which one to choose, Iran or China, so they decided on both), they would utilize a botnet that had been set up on unsuspecting users in both countries. In China, the trojan had been distributed through a worm embedded pirated movies and video games. In Iran, it was through illicit news that made it past the massive firewall that the Iranian government had put up, in addition to the usual pirated software and such. Spam email also worked well, as many users in those nations were not as tech savvy or knowledgeable as other users in the West. And of course, porn. Let's just leave it at that. But it had been making the news, but again, it was blamed on some malicious teenage hacker somewhere in China that had too much time and not enough places to spend his energy.

By the time of the attack, over _sixty million_ computers, mainly located in China and Iran, but from all around the globe, were under the control of these two black hats.

The plan was deviously simple. Instead of Anne and Alan just turning off the entirety of the DOD network, they would have a massive wave of traffic dumping malicious software everywhere; at the milder end of the spectrum, there would be a lot of porn to clean off of the hard drives of many computers (or not), tons of malware, spyware, and other useless widgets clogging up processing power. It would take techs weeks, if not months to get all the stuff of they would place on the hard drives of many a DOD computer. On the more extreme end of the scale, some programs would flash the BIOS of every computer it touched, ruining the hard drive, and possibly causing actual physical damage to the computer itself. Of course, all important data would be snagged and a digital screenshot taken, preserving all of zeros and ones in a moment in time before they were wiped out from the DOD servers. With all the traffic coming in, it would be almost impossible to determine what data was lost and/or stolen in the resulting mess that would occur in the cyberattack. Nakanishi could, and would claim that they had no idea of the attack, and would also claim that for an attack of this size, no one was prepared. Of course, in the aftermath of the physical, terrorist attacks on US military installations, cities and other important areas pertaining to commerce, education, transportation, and historical significance, a cyberattack would only compound these problems a hundredfold. More than likely, they would slip by unnoticed, and the Chinese and the Iranians would have a lot of explaining to do. All of this would go by completely undetected, and despite the reputation drop to Nakanishi, they would quickly recover in the post attack world and reap huge profits.

This would be the case, if Anne and Alan hadn't decided to go after everything else.

"Alan, this is so boring!" she sighed, looking at the plethora of monitors at her workstation. "We gotta do something else!"

"Anne, you know what Zoicite told us," he replied, sternly. "We can't go after NATO, the Ministry of Defence, or hell, even the Metropolitan Police."

"But think of the chaos that we would create!" she pleaded, her eyes blinking frantically. "Right here, from our computers!"

"No," Alan shot back, turning toward her in his swivel chair. "Taking down the entirety of the DOD networks is a massive undertaking unto itself, and I am not going to get caught and burned. I've already had one chance with the Legion, and I'm not going to fuck it up again."

He turned back to his work, but Anne continued to pout at her desk.

"Come on!" she snapped back. "Where's that adventurer spirit that you had when I met you!"

"Those days are kind of behind me," Alan smarmily replied. "I kind of like what I'm doing now."

"So, you're going to let the bigwigs up at Nakanishi HQ push you around, huh?" Anne scoffed at him. "I never pegged you for a sycophant."

Alan sighed and kept looking at his workstation, while Anne continued to glare at him incessantly. After a couple of minutes like this, he finally gave in.

"Alright, you got me."

"Yay!" Anne's mood cheered up immediately. Her hands flew across the keyboard. "What should we attack?!" She immediately answered her own question.

"Let's take down the NATO command networks!" She polluted the communications network of NATO with several petabytes worth of traffic, slowing it down and completely ruining response times of the military units trying to get to terrorist afflicted areas.

All of these was done with Nakanishi equipment, software, IP addresses, their hubs, their switches, their technology. All of this would point back to them.

But Alan and Anne didn't care; this was their show, and they were going to make the biggest mess that they could while they had the resources and the time.

"Did you get to the Met?"

"Nah, save the best for last, hehe." Anne smiled at Alan, who went back to destroying whatever poor servers that he had access to.

"I've having trouble with that firewall to the MVD database," she told him a couple of minutes later, looking intently at her screen. "Think you can take care of it? They don't use our software…"

"I can try…" Alan brought up the IP address that Anne was talking about; this was a remote access point for overseas operatives looking for Russian criminals in foreign countries. She noted that there were logins from every corner of the world, including an IP address right down the road. He figured that someone had to keep watch on the SAS guys there.

* * *

By the time they had finished their work, they not only had shut down the DoD network, but every major military organization that used Nakanishi software, every law enforcement network, communications, mobile phone networks, stock markets, corporations (including a little bit of Nakanishi's own software and development data storage servers, but they at least had the foresight to back them up), and everything else that was connected to the internet. They even went after some personal users, making their lives miserable, with gigabits of malware and widgets that bogged down their systems. They finished at 0800 the next day, after a marathon of hacking. The last thing that Anne did was switch off the entirety of the Metropolitan Police Service's communication network, and to disable all of the mobile towers in the area. After that, the two of them went back to bed, starting yet another round of marathon sex before falling asleep at about 1000.


	43. Chapter XLI: Operation TAKE HOLD, Part I

**Chapter XLI: Operation TAKE HOLD, Part I**

**1730hrs, 16 December 2013, Somewhere in the Southwestern United States.**

_"The Internet is like a vault with a screen door on the back. I don't need jackhammers and atom bombs to get in when I can walk in through the door." William R. Cheswick_

* * *

In the offices of the...let's call them, the Information Operations Section, there sat a curse jar. But this was no ordinary curse jar. This was the geek's curse jar. For every meme that was expressed, 50 cents was to be deposited. Every TV Tropes reference was one dollar (if caught with anything related to TV Tropes on official computers, the offender would be punished even more severely). Anything from imageboards was not allowed, under pain of actually doing PT. The most heinous of the curses depended on how the executive officer, Major Sam Tyler, felt on any given day. This time around, it was "an arrow to the knee" and the "Over 9000" meme, which were a $20 fine. There was plenty of pizza for the entire office after that particular fine had been put into place.

Long derided by the other branches of the US Military, the Air Force was the youngest out of all of them, being founded in 1947 after a reorganization of the military with the National Security Act (which also created the Department of Defense, replacing the more succinctly named Department of War). Unlike other branches of the military however, where the separation between officers and enlisted was significant, the division between the officers and enlisted of the USAF was considerably smaller, almost nonexistent at times. When the USAF was still part of the army, known as the US Army Air Force, enlisted crew and officers working in bombers and fighters collaborated closely, removing those obstacles that were apparent in other branches of the military. The Air Force was more of a technical branch, with more focus on the brains than brawn (but then again, they did have bombers and nukes...); a huge chunk of the DOD budget was spent on the Air Force. It also helped to make for living conditions were significantly better than…er…the other branches.

"Okay everyone, that's it for the day," Major Tyler called out to the command room. Rows of desks and computers, along with a huge screen on the wall displaying data and other necessary information loomed over the entire room. "Time for the next shift."

"Damn, that was a funny one with that guy outside of the base," Chief Master Sergeant Robert Jameson said to him (not Master Chief, that's a completely different branch…but same pay grade, nonetheless).

"Trying to crack our server, and not even being able to hide his IP and MAC address," Tyler said, shaking his head at some of the attempts to access information on DoD servers. Of course, like any major institution, there were massive holes in the computer networks that had allowed for systematic penetration of their security, compromising their operational status. But ever since they had started using Nakanishi software to plug all of the gaps, things had been going quite smoothly ever since. Of course, they had only just switched over to Windows 7, even though Windows 8 had come out last year. Typical government protocol, but there was a reason behind the madness. One that most people couldn't figure out, especially so if you worked in government.

"So, you got anything planned for your leave time?" CMS Jameson asked Major Tyler as he was packing up his briefcase.

"Nah, I'm staying here, gotta keep watch over all of this stuff," he said to CMS Jameson, putting his laptop in the briefcase. "Plus, the 32rd Squadron is coming back from Germany after that three month tour there."

"You deployed overseas for Iraq, right?" Jameson asked. He had already done several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, like many people in the military.

"Once, but I was just a Fobbit," Tyler replied, shrugging. "After my deployment, I asked for a PCS and transferred here."

"Heh, I've been to Iraq before," Jameson replied. "In 1991. And 2003. And 2006."

"Don't remind me," the XO kidded with him, rolling his eyes at the very experienced airman in front of his. "Hey Mason! Time to leave!" he yelled at a solitary figure, still typing away at his computer.

"Staff Sergeant," Jameson called out to him. "It's time to go," he said in a kind of sing-song voice. The Air Force was not known for its formality.

"Just a few more seconds…" Mason replied. He was kind of nerdy, with pasty white skin, large BC glasses and a haircut right out of the seventies.

Tyler sighed and walked over to the computer station where Mason was furiously working. "Look, Mason, I know that you're upset over Allison last week, but…"

"What about me…?" Senior Airman Allison Vogel, said, suddenly appearing over the shoulder of Major Tyler. Blonde hair, blue eyes, great measurements, and the envy of many guys (and girls) on the base, she had been asked out many times. Fraternization was of course, against military regulations, but that didn't stop anybody.

Unfortunately, Mason was one of those that got rejected; he didn't even stand a chance. She glared at Mason, who avoided her piercing stare.

"It's nothing," Tyler replied to her, trying to defuse the situation. "Carry on."

Allison looked at the two of them, scoffed, and walked away toward the exit.

"Alright, alright, I'm going," Mason sighed. "I was so close too, I thought. Never did anything like that while I was in school."

Tyler didn't have the heart to tell him that he never stood a chance in the first place, but as the XO, it really wasn't his place to advise on such issues, unless they got too out of hand.

"Look, you'll get over it. My first wife didn't end up so well, and look how me and my second wife are doing!"

Mason looked at him. "Didn't your second wife sleep with the base commander?"

Tyler rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, details, details. Plus, she was hammered at the time, and she promised never to do that ever again."

"Right…"

"Come on Mason, Jameson is buying drinks at the E-Club tonight…"  
CMS Jameson stifled a groan at that, but he knew that the Major would reimburse him for his troubles.

That got Mason moving; free drinks were always a good way to start the week off.

"Let me shut down the computer here and…"

Something caught his eye. "Huh. My computer is running kind of slow…" Mason opened up the task manager and checked the programs running.

"Jesus!" There were almost fifty programs running at the same time, and the number kept increasing. Everything was being bogged down, and the amount of data incoming in only meant one thing; a cyberattack.

"Sir, we have a situation!" Mason yelled. Major Tyler ran over to his computer and assessed the problem. From what it looked like, there was an inordinate amount of data streaming in from all over the place, completely overloading the servers. Vogel and Jameson ran over to their respective workstations, and started to try to throttle the data stream back to prevent any more loss of information. They weren't having much luck with that.

"Kill the connection!" Tyler yelled at them.

"I'm trying, but there's too many computers and too many programs!" Vogel yelled from her workstation.

"No! Disconnect everything!" Major Tyler physically pulled out the Ethernet cord to his computer, which stopped all of the incoming traffic. Thank god for the benefits of tethering a computer down to a hardpoint. "Chief!"

"Yes sir!"  
"Shut down everything, including the servers, the wireless network, all of it! Nothing moves until we get a fix on what the hell is going on!"

"Roger!" CMS Jameson ran to the server room, which was down from the main work area in a small alcove of offices.

"Chief!" one of the techs there yelled out as he burst into the room, fumbling with the keypad and his security card in his haste to get in. "We're getting a lot of shit here!"

"Shut it all down!"

"What?!" Shutting down the entire network for the base would be catastrophic. But then again, so would every computer burned up and rendered unusable.

"Everything, wireless, wired, shut it the fuck down!"

"On it!" The tech sergeant on duty quickly gave commands to disengage from the DoD Network.

In the meanwhile, Major Tyler was trying to reach his CO, Colonel Paul Edwards, who had already left for the day. But nothing was getting through on the cell network; all he kept getting was a busy tone.

"Dammit!" He reached for the phone on his desk as dialed Edward's cell phone. Maybe he could get to him that way.

The phone rang for what seemed like an eternity, with various people running in and out of Major Tyler's office, bringing him reports, status updates and progress on defeating the cyberattack.

"Colonel Edwards speaking." Finally, he picked up.

"Sir, this is Major Tyler, there is major incident going on here…" he took a deep breath before continuing. "Sir, I don't know how they did it, but they're into most of our servers and they've got most of the data in there."

"Jesus, how the fuck did this happen!" Edwards turned his car around; he had just left the base and was about to turn onto the highway but now home was going to have to wait.

"I have no idea, sir," Tyler said, looking at some of the reports that were now coming in from the different squadrons under his command. "We have major breaches in the research servers, almost all that data has been wiped out, major breaches in the communications and encryption servers, major breaches in the data processing servers. We're trying to get everything disconnected from the network, but we're going to have to a major cleanup after this is all said and done."

"I'm on my way back!"

He managed to get to the turnaround and sped back as fast as he could. Edwards decided to take the gate entrance nearest to the hospital on base, as he would be on the base faster. They were closing the place down, unfortunately, but oh well. A white Chevy Tahoe cut him off as he passed by one of the bars frequented by many AF personnel on the way out from work, and he honked his horn, pissed off at the driver. But the Tahoe kept accelerating, and then it veered to the left and straight into the checkpoint at the entrance to the base. In a second, there was a bright flash, and the Tahoe blew up.

Edwards slammed the brakes on his car, narrowly avoiding several others who did the same once the explosion went off.

"We're under attack!" Colonel Edwards screamed over his cell phone, ducking down and popping the glove compartment open in his '70 Ford Mustang. Inside was his military issue M9 Beretta, loaded but not cocked. He chambered a round and got out of his car, still in his dress blues.

"I understand that sir," Tyler said, wondering what that loud noise was.

"NO! We're under attack physically!" Edwards yelled, getting out of his car and running toward the base gates, where the suicide bomb had gone off. Two Security Forces officers were down, along with a couple of others who had been unlucky enough to be caught in the blast.

"What?!"

"Lock down the entrances to the building and don't let anyone in or out!" he ordered, checking on a driver who had been stunned by the explosion. He nodded that he was okay, and Edwards moved on. "Do you have your sidearm on you?"

"Well…"  
"Do you?!"

Tyler opened up one of the desk drawers, second one on the right. There lay a M9 Beretta, but it only had one magazine of ammunition…

"Yes, I have it."

"You might need it. I'll get back to you as soon as possible." With that, Edwards hung up and started assisting people who had been injured.

"Ma'am, ma'am, are you okay?" he asked a middle-aged woman in another car that had been waiting in line to get in, ostensibly to go to the hospital. Thank god that was nearby; they were certainly going to need it.

"I'm…I'm a bit dizzy," she replied.

A bullet suddenly zipped by and pinged off the roof of her red Grand Marquis. She screamed and tried to curl up into a ball. Edwards looked around and saw three U-Haul trucks pull up and disgorge gunmen, armed with a variety of Uzis, AKMs, M16s and shotguns.

For them, they probably didn't think this one through though since the Security Forces (the police/protection detail of the USAF) did its training right near the gate area there. Within moments of the explosion, several HMMWVs were rolling from the vehicle depot, armed with M240 machine guns and packed full of Security Forces troops.

Edwards returned fire with his pistol, snapping off several shots as he had been trained and hitting one of the Uzi wielding maniacs. The man simply shrugged it off. Edwards chalked it up to either armor or drugs. Maybe both. He continued to fire, but it was becoming evident that the situation was getting worse rapidly.

Suddenly, the Humvees showed up across from the gunmen, and the unmistakable sound of machine guns clattering away punctured the hulls of the U-Haul trucks, setting one ablaze and scattering the rest of the terrorists, who were then apprehended by dismounted SF personnel.

Then another explosion went off in a different part of the base. It would have seemed that another suicide bomber had hit another checkpoint. The Security Forces piled back into their Humvees and responded to that crisis, while Edwards got back into his car and raced toward the offices of the Information Operations Section.

Five minutes later, and some harassment by the Security Forces, he arrived.

"Sir, here's the latest developments," Major Tyler said to Colonel Edwards as he walked in the door. He still had his pistol, tucked in a pocket somewhere.

"Did you at least get an IP address? Something?"

"Sir, we don't know how they're doing it, but all our security was completely bypassed,"

"So that Nakanishi software was completely useless?"

"It would appear that way."

"Fuck." Edwards continued to his office, which was right outside the command area. It was humming with activity, with service members running about, trying to fix the situation.

"Attention!" CMS Jameson called out. Most of the people were about to snap to attention but Edwards replied extremely quickly.

"At ease! Get back to work!" Everyone complied with that one.

Colonel Edwards opened up his office door and stepped in, followed by Major Tyler.

"Was there any indication of this?" he asked Tyler, sitting down at his simple wooden desk. He placed his pistol in one of the drawers and took out a flask, filled with Jonnie Walker Black. Tyler saw it and pretended not to notice. The Colonel had some Scottish in him and besides, he seemed to do better if he had a little liquid courage to soften the nerves.

"That's a negative," Tyler said, poking at a Blackberry Playbook (it was the only tablet that the US government allowed for sensitive work at this point). "Traffic from the usual suspects was low, there was no indication from any groups that we were keeping tabs on…"

"What about…?" Edwards started to ask, but Tyler read his mind and spoke ahead.

"No suspicious activity or anything like that."

"You sure?"

"Positive. I don't think they would have done something like this."

"Damn."

"What are your orders?"

Edwards was silent for a second, contemplating the situation at hand. They were under a massive cyberattack, their defenses not only breached, but completely bypassed altogether. That meant that somebody within the Nakanishi Group, or someone with experience in Nakanishi programs was orchestrating this attack.

"Tyler, go back and check the log files on the Nakanishi activity in the last twenty four hours. You know, the one that we're not supposed to…" Edwards had been told by the generals not to press Nakanishi for more information about their software, but had said nothing about monitoring server traffic. Which was in the purview of his unit anyway.

"Got it, I'll have Vogel and…" he looked out of the office door and saw Mason helping Jameson with someone. "…Mason check the log files."

"You sure about that…?" Word got around fast here.

"I'm sure. It'll help unit cohesion."

Edwards shrugged. "Your call."

Major Tyler walked out of the office and toward the command area. "Vogel! Mason!"

Both of them came running toward him, avoiding eye contact with each other.

"I need you two to go over the log files from the Nakanishi server that we have set up. Look for anything suspicious."

"Yes sir!" The two of them stalked off, still trying to avoid eye contact but doing a horrible job in the process.

Tyler continued to poke away at his tablet computer, cursing the horrible interface and lack of support for this stupid thing. He went back into Edwards' office and continued to analyze the situation from the reports that they were getting.

"Sir!"

A couple of minutes later, Tyler and Edwards' meeting was interrupted by an airman, running in from outside. He was covered in sweat and breathing very hard. He snapped to attention as soon as he got inside the office.

"What is it?" Edwards ask, waving the man to be at ease.

"I've been sent by the base commander to appraise you of recent events, since communication is down."

"Go ahead." Edwards could obviously see that this young man was very stressed out, and tried to react appropriately.

"Sir, it's a mess," the airman began.

"I am aware of that…"

"No sir, you don't understand." He gasped for more air. "Sir, they've hit everything, training bases, bombers, nuclear silos, everything..."

"What!" That was bad news indeed.

"And it gets even worse sir," he kept going on. "Someone tried to take out the President as well."

Both Tyler and Edwards exhaled at that news. This was very bad.

"Do you have any other news?"

"That's all I have at the moment."

"Very well. Please tell the commander that we have received the information, and if we need more, we'll send somebody."

"Yes sir." The airman ran out as quickly as he had come, almost steamrolling Senior Airman Vogel as she came into the office for a status report.

"Ms. Vogel?" Colonel Edwards called out. "What do you have for us?"

"Sir," she said, glaring at Tyler, who again, pretended to ignore the various (and usually harmless) shenanigans that went on here. "I…we found a huge data spike in traffic from China and Iran, sir."

"The Chinese and Iranians…?"

"It would appear that they have found and exploited a previously unknown vulnerability in Nakanishi software, allowing them to attack our network and servers." She read stoically from a piece of paper she had in her hand.

"Jesus, this is an act of war!" Edwards exclaimed. Something didn't sit right with that statement with Tyler though, even as his CO was all riled up.

"But I thought I asked you to look up on Nakanishi," Tyler asked, confused. Why was she bringing up this then?

"Sir, that's what we found," Vogel replied. "All the data traffic points to high usage from these areas, exploiting this vulnerability."

Tyler thought about it for a second. That was way too convenient. China and Iran had been hostile to the United States before, but despite all of that China would not simply throw away its trade relations with the US to launch a massive cyberattack on its major trading partner. There was simply too much to lose. As for Iran, well, maybe, but they made easy scapegoats for anything.

"What if it isn't a vulnerability?" he said out loud.

Vogel and Edwards looked at him.

"What do you mean?" Edwards asked, slowly.

"Perhaps this so called vulnerability is part of the program," Tyler replied, thinking this through. "Maybe it's been deliberately placed there."

"By the Chinese?" Vogel asked.

"No, by Nakanishi themselves."

Colonel Edwards leaned back in his chair. That whisky seemed very good about now…but he couldn't. Not when they were on to something big.

"Haven't we heard about that worm going around Asia for awhile now?"

"Yeah, that one. The one that's like Stuxnet?"

Tyler continued on with his theory. "It would take a lot of processing power to launch an attack this large, right? So what if, and this is a hypothetical 'what if', but if Nakanishi released that worm and used it to build a botnet. I mean, the largest botnet was 30 million computers, and that's a lot of processing power."

"But why would they do that?" Vogel asked.

"I don't know. But if they did, they have something to gain. Nakanishi runs a lot of things here."

The revolution hit all of them like a sledgehammer. Nakanishi ran their software. Nakanishi gave them free servers. Nakanishi provided the computers. Hell, Nakanishi provided them with mice and mousepads.

"Jesus…" Edwards muttered. This could be big. But how big was it though?

"Sir!" Mason came running into the room. "Major, we've got a big problem with another server."

"We can discuss this later," Edwards said, recognizing they still had to deal with the current situation.

"Understood." Major Tyler and Vogel left to deal with the continuing cyberattack, while Colonel Edwards pondered the next course of action he should take in regards to Tyler's increasingly plausible theory.


	44. Chapter XLII:Operation TAKE HOLD,Part II

**Chapter XLII: Operation TAKE HOLD, Part II**

**0400hrs, 17 December 2013 Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.**

_"There are only two kinds of people in this world. Good people who do good deeds. And bad people who do bad. That's the only difference in human beings. There's no other difference." Razia Khan, My Name is Khan._

* * *

Meanwhile, in India, Comrade Ramesh had his team of ten insurgents in a minibus, ready for the time to strike. He held his AKM (most people couldn't tell the difference between the AK-47 and the AKM, but whatever) against his chest, pounding with nervousness, but he was ready to do his duty.

The steamy air felt gross, but this was so much better than squatting in the jungles of Orissa somewhere. Well, as good as squatting in a minibus could get, and at any rate, his comrades that he had left behind there were suffering all the same from Indian military assaults, unrelenting ever since Operation Green Hunt had started in 2010. Ramesh sighed. Those were the days…tromping around the jungle, spreading the word of Chairman Mao around, making sure everyone had what they needed. The villagers in Koraput district, where he had been stationed, always needed clean water, education, a way of earning money, and protection of their land. That was which the Naxalites had provided. Until it all got messed up.

"Are you all ready, comrades?" he asked the people sitting in the back of the minibus. They all nodded their heads in acknowledgement. He had heard some loud pops and bangs in the distance about an hour ago, but they had stopped after a couple of minutes. Ramesh was sure that it was nothing.

"Very good then comrades. We shall begin."

The doors opened up on the minibus and they started their attack. Ramesh lead his team from a side alley to Commercial Street, keeping low and quiet in anticipation of this event.

Commercial Street was exactly that; it was filled with lots of clothes shops, specialty stores, wedding planners (always important, even more so in India), mobile and electronics outlets, and even the odd restaurant, the main one being Café Coffee Day on the south end of the street. Of course on the side streets leading to and from Commercial Street there were chaiwallas, people hawking bindis, bangles and brooches, selling newspapers, and the like.

Despite it only being 0400 in the morning, it was kind of a good time to place an attack. Not too many people to get in the way, but there were some innocents were around to become a statistic. Plus, the response time of the authorities would be drastically reduced at this time in the morning, and by the time his team had cut a swath of destruction, he would be safely…

"Comrade, the police are here!"

"What!" He could scarcely believe his eyes. There was a line of police cars in front of them, with several officers armed with rifles and pistols.

"Swipe them away!" he ordered. His team opened fire on the police, scattering some of them, but some stayed and fought on, firing their Enfield bolt-action rifles and at his team. It only took them a couple of seconds for Ramesh's team to clear out all of police out of the area, but the plan was already starting to fall apart. Instead of slicing a path destruction from Commercial Street to Brigades, Ramesh's team was now fighting for their life as multiple police units swarmed in. They were only armed with light weapons, but when twenty or bolt-action rifles are firing from all different angles it didn't matter how well armed you were, it only took one bullet to kill you.

"Comrade!" one of the squad members called out. "We've lost two members already!"

"Keep pushing forward!" Ramesh yelled out, firing a burst from his AK at a police officer hiding behind a newspaper stall. He went down.

Several teams were actually supposed to be attacking this area, actually, due to its high commercial value and military presence. But someone had got to them first.

That someone was the 108th South Indian Defence Force.

"All units, this is Devi Actual, radio check," Lt. Iyer said over her radio. She, Col. Krishnan, and her XO, Major Elizabeth John were at a temporary operating post in Cubbon Park, less than a kilometer away from Commercial Street.

"Durga 52 reporting in," Sgt. Prasad replied. She, along with Corporal Shetty were with a squad of soldiers from their unit near Dispensary Road, right up from Commercial Street.

"Kali 53, reporting in."

"Lakshmi 54, reporting in."

"Radha 55, reporting in."

"Padma 56, reporting in."

"All units have reported in Ma'am," Lt. Iyer said to Col. Krishnan.

"Very good." Krishnan wiped the sweat off her forehead (despite it being winter, it was still very humid outside), removing the black beret that she usually wore. Like most of the soldiers, she was wearing a variant of the MARPAT uniform that the US Marine Corps wore, along with a tactical vest and P226 strapped to her leg. "Standby."

"Roger, standing by," Prasad replied. "Hey, Shetty."  
"Yeah," Shetty said, hefting her MG4 machine gun from one arm to the other.

"That gunfire sounds pretty close," Prasad noted. "Take Jyothi and see if they need help."

"Aren't our orders to stay here?" She coughed, mainly from all of the dust that was in the air.

"Shetty…" Prasad glared at her.

"Fine, fine. Hey Jyothi! Come with me!" The two women ran down the street to see what was going on with the police units over there. Shetty peered around a corner, looking down a side street that ran toward Commercial.

"Uh, it's not looking good over here!" she yelled into her walkie-talkie. She saw a police officer go down, hit by a burst of AKM fire. "The police are outgunned by the terrorists!"

"Great." Prasad rolled her eyes and hit the transmit button on her radio. "This is Durga 52, to Devi Actual, over."

"Go ahead, Durga 52."

"Actual, we have a major situation developing here on Commercial street," she said, running toward Shetty's position. "Police units are being forced back by insurgent forces and might make a break for Safina Plaza, over."

"Standby, 52, we're still cleaning up the mess over here by the High Court," Iyer said back. "Colonel!"

"What is it?" Krishnan was still looking over those maps and calling out orders to the other units. There were spots of hostile activity in and around the park, the High Court of Karnataka, and the Shivaji Nagar bus station.

"52 says that the police on Commercial are having a hard time keeping the insurgents back."

"Then have them engage them," she replied calmly.

"Got it." Iyer lifted the receiver back up. "Durga 52, you are clear to engage the hostiles. Over."

"Received! Out!" Prasad slapped Shetty on the shoulder, which was the indicator to move forward. "Take them out!"

Shetty moved around the corner, sticking close to the wall on the left side while Prasad had part of her squad (fire team "Alpha") set up a bounding overwatch on the left corner. She sent fire team "Bravo" further down Dispensary Road to try and outflank the approaching terrorists.

"Alpha team, move forward!" She aimed her M16A4 down the road, complete with M203 grenade launcher and optics on the rail mount.

"Contact, at one o'clock!" Shetty yelled out. She fired a burst from her MG4, which sent the hostile contact fleeing backward.

"Comrade, there are more of the police! And they are heavily armed!"

Ramesh scurried around some of the police cars and tried to make a turn onto Dispensary, but was blocked off by Prasad's fire team Bravo rounding the corner and laying down a wall of fire that killed two more of his men and sent the rest tumbling back.

"We can still get around them if we swing around Dispensary and head up to Safina!" he yelled to the six surviving members of his team. "Kill anyone who stands in your way!"

One of his comrades got a lucky shot off on one of fire team Bravo's members, collapsing her in an alleyway.

"Fuck!" he heard the team leader yell. "Durga 52, this is Bravo, we have a person down!"

"Keep up the attack!" he yelled.  
The alley was more like a narrow street than a simple place between buildings, and Ramesh's comrades moved aggressively forward, their AKs pumping out death. Brass sprayed everywhere, cling clanging on the ground. Ramesh's gun clicked empty, and he ejected the magazine to put a new one in. One thing that the movies never seemed to show was the badass looking way you could reload an AK; you had to rock the magazine front to back when inserting it into the chamber. Even better, you could knock the empty magazine off by hitting the magazine release and popping the next one in, expediting the reloading process. It was just another trick that Ramesh had learned in his Naxalite days.

The opposing team was at a disadvantage, with a squadmate down, one of them had to pull the other out of the line of fire while the other two engaged the hostile force, providing a base of fire. The machine gunner for Bravo team aggressively switched from firing short bursts to firing a longer, more concentrated bursts of fire, trying to pin down Ramesh's team.

He wasn't having any of that though. "Move forward!" he encouraged. "For the revolution!" Firing another burst, they kept forcing the fire team back.

Fire team Alpha was running up Commercial Street, having spotted Ramesh's team take a side route and straight into Bravo.

"Bravo, hold on, we're coming toward you!" Prasad yelled into her radio. The sound of gunfire intensified as they approached Bravo team's position. A long burst of machine gun fire was met with several barks of multiple AK47s firing back.

"I'm falling back, we can't hold these guys off any longer!" came the response. "We're moving up Dispensary road and taking up a blocking position."

"Affirmative," Prasad replied. "Hurry it up!" she yelled to the rest of her fire team.

They finally got to the side street, and dashed past the fallen brass and empty magazines that the terrorists had left behind. Prasad spotted the other fire team crouching behind some dumpsters, one of them administering first aid to their fallen squadmate. She winced in pain, lying there with some blood pooling out on the ground. It looked black in the pre-dawn light.

"Chandra, how is she doing?" Prasad asked the team leader.

"Madhuri is fine, the vest saved her from any serious injury, but she also took a bullet in the leg," the TL replied, putting a bandage on the wound. "You'll be fine."

"Are you sure?" Madhuri replied. She brushed back the twin French braids that had fallen in front of her shoulders during the gunfight. "It looks really bad."

"Hey, I'm sure you'll make it out," the TL smiled to her.

"Okay," Prasad said, taking a deep breath in, trying not to panic at the developing situation. "We're going to Safina Plaza to get the bad guys."

"Be careful," the TL said. "One of the men, I think he was in charge, was really dangerous. He started giving orders and then they all charged at us like they were mad."

"Understood. Stay here and take care of her."

"Alright."

Prasad took her squad up the road to Safina Plaza, another shopping area within Shivaji Nagar. Safina Plaza was actually a two story shopping center, built sometime last century with the expansion of commerce in mind. The management rotated stalls in there; so every couple of weeks there was a new display. Last month it was a bunch of saris, dupattas and lungis being sold there; this month, provided if it survived, was going to be handmade items and gifts from the all the various different states in India.

"Hold up here!" she yelled in front of the taxi and bus stop in front of the plaza. She looked around the area, but the terrorists were nowhere to be found. No guns pointing from the second floor, no terrorists at the entrance, and no evidence that they might have come in there. But Prasad just had a gut feeling that they were in there. That's where she would go if being hunted down by a hostile force; in there, there were lots of places to get the drop on an unsuspecting target. The stairwells, the sharp corners, the open center in the middle of the building…it was a nightmare in there.

"Okay, Jyothi, go with Shetty around to the left entrance and try to see if they're in there."

"Why do I have to go with…" Shetty complained, but Prasad wasn't having it from her.

"Hey! Go!"

"Fine, fine, let's move out." Shetty and Jyothi both ran around to the left, seeing if any of the terrorists had left or were still in the building.

"Durga 52 to Bravo," Prasad said, talking into her radio. "How's Madhuri holding up?"

"She's doing good, Devi Actual is sending an ambulance unit to pick her up."

"Good." Prasad was relieved to hear that help was on the way for their fallen comrade. Switching gears, she contacted Lt. Iyer. "Devi Actual, this is Durga 52, come in."

"Go ahead."

"We've tracked the location of the terrorists to Safina Plaza near Infantry Road and the Army Area, over."

Iyer nodded at the information, writing down on a piece of paper and handing it to Col. Krishnan, who was still looking at maps and trying to get the situation contained.

"Chief Minister, I understand…" she said over her mobile phone, trying to block out Iyer's conversation. "We are doing the best we can to contain the situation here…I know it's bad, but it could have been much worse if we had not received information from a government source…"

"And what government source would that be?!" Chief Minister Krishna Gowda screamed on the other end. He was part of the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party, sometimes known for going off on the deep end when it came to certain religious or national defence issues.

"Sir, it was someone in the Japanese government. I don't know who it was, but they knew our operating procedure, our equipment, even my name and personal history, sir."

The CM sighed and wondered what the hell this cruel world was coming to. He was going to be damned if some foreigners from Japan told him what to do. But they had informed the 108th of the situation and at last, his pet project could finally have some merit…and more funding. Which meant more prestige and perhaps a run for the Prime Minister's office. Hell, he would take the President's office, even though that didn't really do much in terms of actual power.

"Alright, just take care of the situation. I'll get back to you."

"Understood." Krishnan hung up the phone and went back to her maps

In the meanwhile, Iyer was talking to Prasad.

"Received. Army personnel from the Madras Engineers are locking down the area and should be there to assist in ten minutes. Over."

"Affirmative. We'll try to contain the situation here, out."

But Prasad was not going to let the army do that. She and her team, along with the 108th South Indian Defence Force had blunted and destroyed the majority of the cells attacking Bangalore, and she was not going to let some pissant terrorist group stand in her way, let alone get taken down by the army and have them take all the credit.

"What the hell is the Army doing anyway?" Prasad said into her radio. "They have a base right behind me."

"Uh, they're busy, a suicide bomber took out the entrance to the Army Area, over," came the response from Iyer.

"Great."

Prasad lifted her M16A4 to the firing position and moved up the stairs that led to the entrance of Safina Plaza. "This is Durga 52, I'm going in."

"That's a negative, do not engage…"

Prasad turned the radio off. That was enough of that.

She continued forward, her weapon at the ready. She stopped at the first hallway; it was a couple of meters away from the entrance, with a staircase in front of her that lead to the second floor, a bunch of stores on her left and an empty showroom on her right that usually held stalls for vendors and the like. Prasad suddenly saw some movement in the showroom. Two men, AKMs and tactical vests. They were stumbling around in the dark and were not paying attention to their mission, which was probably to watch the entrance.

Since they hadn't noticed her, Prasad had some time to get the kill shot in. She flipped the sight for the M203 and registered the distance from her to the terrorists; about fifty meters away. Close, but not too dangerous. She shifted her left hand from underneath the barrel of her M16A4 to the trigger of the M203; she had already loaded a round beforehand. Sighting in, she pulled the trigger and sent a 40mm grenade spiraling toward their position. A loud, startling bang echoed in the empty showroom, and the two men fell back, dead.

"This is Durga 52, two tangos down."

No response.

"This is…oh dammit." She had to turn the radio back on, duh.

"This is Durga 52, two tangos down," Prasad said.

"Uh…roger," Lt. Iyer replied. "Did they attack you outside?" Iyer guessed that Prasad had entered the building and had started to engage the insurgents. She would have a talk with her after this entire mess had blown over…if she survived.  
"Yes," Prasad said, lying blatantly. "Yes they did."

"Understood," Iyer said. "Continue to patrol the area outside Safina Plaza, army units are ten minutes out."

"Roger. Out."

"Tamils," Prasad rolled her eyes and released the transmit button on her radio. "They'll believe anything these days." She continued onward, looking for more targets.

"Ramesh, they're picking us off like flies. We've only got you, me, Padma and Shashil left," one of the squadmates told Comrade Ramesh. They were holed up in a jewelry store on the second floor, the shiny diamonds and precious stones glistening in the moonlight. Ramesh had seen Prasad come in and take out two more of his men…his men! The police were nothing compared to what these soldiers were.

"Dammit!" Ramesh hissed, punching the floor in anger.

Downstairs, Prasad heard a loud noise, then some scurrying about.

"Durga 52, Durga 52, this is Bravo, come in, over,"

Fuck, that stupid radio, she thought to herself. She took cover behind a wall that was next to the stairs and pressed the transmit button.

"Yeah, I can hear you, Bravo," she whispered into it.

"The ambulance is here and they're taking Maddie away. What are your orders, over?"

"Get to Safina Plaza and set up a blocking position near the entrance, facing the Army Area, over."

"Roger."

Upstairs, things were getting panicky.

"Ramesh, we need to move! They're calling for reinforcements and we'll be trapped in here!" The other squad members were taking up positions by the stairs, aiming their AK-47s and AKMs downrange.

Ramesh cursed the day he had met Jadeite; something inside of him wondered if this was all a setup to get rid of the remain Naxalites in the area. He sighed and started to move toward to another stairwell that was near a parking lot (well, more like a huge bike rack for motorcycles and stuff). As he did so, there was a loud explosion, and he turned around to see the last three members of his squad blown up in an explosion. There was the thudding of some boots coming up the stairs, and for a moment, he saw the soldiers that had been giving him trouble. They were clad in a weird, boxy, green/black camouflage, with heavy tactical vests, M16-type weapons that were rarely found in India other than some military units, and helmets in the same camouflage pattern as their uniforms. They were completely different than the soldiers he had fought against when he was a Naxalite, and it showed.

"There's one of them, over there!" Bravo team leader shouted out to Prasad.

"I see him!" Prasad lifted her M16A4 and sighted it on the silhouette opposite of her. She fired a burst.

"Ow!" Ramesh exclaimed, dropping his AKM and clutching his head with his left hand. He looked at it; the hand was bloody.

"Did you get him?" Bravo TL asked Prasad.

"I don't know," she replied, still keeping her M16A4 at the ready. "Move up, and I'll cover."

"Got it." Bravo team stacked up and moved up the stairs and toward the opposite side of the second floor, checking the bodies of the three terrorists as they went.

"I've got some blood, an AK, but nobody here," the TL yelled.

"Shit," Prasad muttered. "Keep looking!"

Ramesh had made his way down the opposite flight of stairs, stopping only to check the corners to make sure those soldiers didn't get him like the others. He had come this far, and had seen his revolutionary brothers shot down time after time, only for him to escape and raise a whole new army to fight the imperialists. Such was the nature of insurgent warfare. Ramesh found the exit, finally, and ran out. Alpha team, who was supposed to be guarding that exit, had rushed in and missed seeing him by a scant few seconds. He made his escape into the darkness, running as fast as he could away from the madness.

"Alpha, what the hell are you doing here?" Prasad yelled at the fire team as they came charging up the stairs.

"I thought you needed help!" Shetty yelled back.

"Fuck! You're supposed to be guarding the west exit! Now that one terrorist has gotten away!"

"I didn't see anything!" Shetty protested.

Prasad threw up her hands in frustration and shook her head. "Dammit, the LT doesn't know we're in here, and if we let one get away…" She thought for a second, before turning to Bravo's TL.

"Wait, you said that you found some blood?"

"Yeah? Why?"  
"Because he might have left a trail. Shetty, take Bravo and see if you can find anything. I'll stay outside and keep the Army guys busy."

"Alright." Shetty motioned to Bravo team, and they went sprinting after the blood trail that Ramesh had left behind.

"Durga 52, this is Devi Actual, come in, over."

Prasad reached for her radio. "Yeah, this is 52, go ahead."

"Army units are arriving at your location, from the Madras Engineers, assist their operations in the area."

"Roger, out."

Prasad ran back down the stairs and dashed toward the entrance, just in time to see a couple of Army trucks pull up and start unloading soldiers.

"Who's in command here?" one of them yelled out (in mangled Kannada). Prasad recognized him instantly as a Sikh; with their distinctive Dastar (or turban), long, uncut beards and a Kirpan sword (or representation thereof) hanging by his side, the Sikhs were as badass as they came. Except, well, maybe Gurkas.

"I am," Prasad yelled out. The Sikh came over, touting his INSAS rifle, along with a couple of other soldiers.

"I'm Havildar (Sergeant) Vikram Singh, Madras Engineer Group, what's the situation here?" he said in very bad Kannada. It was obvious that he was from up north.

"He said…" one of the soldiers that had come over with him started to say, but Singh glared at him. Now it was clear that soldier knew Kannada.

"There were some terrorists in there, but they have been cleared out," Prasad replied, trying not to give away too much. "We engaged them from the outside and took down several of them, but we're looking for some more that might have escaped."

"Hmmm," Havildar Singh replied, trying to keep up with the rapid-fire Kannada that sounded so strange to his Punjabi ears. He turned to the other soldier. "Sepoy Shinde, what the hell did she say?" he asked him in Punjabi.

Shinde hated being the go between the locals and the Army units; since there was so many different languages, translators were in high demand, and since he spoke the odd combination of Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi and English, he had been pressed into service by his overbearing and patriotic father, who had fought in the IPKF in Sri Lanka, and against the Pakistanis in the Kargil War.

"She said that they cleared out the building since there were terrorists in it," he simplified it down for Singh.

"Really? I'm impressed. I wasn't quite sure that they were up to that task, being trained by those mercenaries from America and all."

"He said that he was impressed by your work." Again, Shinde kept most of the unnecessary comments out.

"That's nice," Prasad replied coldly. "Tell him that he can take his force in and make sure that everything is secure."

Singh didn't take that comment very well. "That's all well and good, but can't you guys secure the building while we go after the terrorists? You know, let the real soldiers do the work?"

Prasad needed to get away from this conversation really fast, and fortunately for her, it came in the form of a message from Bravo team.

"This is Bravo, we've found the blood trail and are in pursuit of a suspect, heading toward Cubbon and MG Road, over."

"Roger that," Prasad said. "Excuse me, we've just found the terrorist, now if you would excuse me, I have a war to fight."

With that, she ran off, leaving the confused Shinde to explain to a very angry Singh why they were in charge of the cleanup operation.

"Where are they?!" Bravo yelled out to Shetty.

"He's headed over toward the rickshaws, on Cubbon!" she yelled back, trying to get a bead on the man running away from their squad. He was about 100 meters away, bleeding from the head, with a pistol in hand. So far, he hadn't shot at them, but if he did…

The man turned around and fired off a shot, the rounds zipping by and changing the ROE completely from pursuit, to takedown.

"This is Durga 52, I'm approaching from your five o'clock!" Prasad said into the radio, another 100 meters behind the pursuit team. She cringed as the target fired off some more bullets, and moved slightly to the right to avoid the ricochets bouncing off of the asphalt.

"We've got him!" Shetty aimed her MG4 at the fleeing target, and lowered her sights on the man's legs. Of course, that was not a very good idea, and it was a tactic that was not to be used unless in a desperate situation, but a massive terrorist attack on the Republic of India? Yeah, that counted.

Right in front of the man however, there was an auto rickshaw. More importantly, there was an auto rickshaw driver in it, starting his day early. Before they had any time to react, he had hopped in and told the sleepy driver to gun it, throwing a 100 rupee note in his lap. The driver, being a responsive one (especially to money), quickly threw his sleep away and drove off, irregardless that the man he was transporting had just snapped off some shots at local law enforcement. Hey, from where he was sitting, they could have been common thugs for all he cared.

"Stop!" Shetty yelled out. She fired a burst from her MG4. This only spurred the driver on, and within a couple of seconds, the driver and his passenger were gone.

"Goddammit!" Prasad cursed, arriving at where the rest of the team was gasping for breath, on the sidewalk near MG road.

"We almost had him," Shetty groaned, hefting her MG4 from the firing position to the ready position.

"Great, how am I going to explain this to the LT?" Prasad looked around. There were fires on the horizon, from early on in the night when the 108th had intercepted terrorist cell activity, and from the ones that they had missed as well. They couldn't win them all.

"Alright, let's get back to Safina and regroup," Prasad said to her team. "I'll try to explain everything to Lt. Iyer and we'll get this sorted out. Good job out there," she reassured, despite the setback. "We even got a compliment from the Army." Well, as good a slighting remark from a pompous Sikh would have to suffice, for now at least.

"Move out," she ordered. The troopers started to jog back to Safina plaza, their gear and weapons rustling in the pre-dawn darkness, illuminated by the fires from the attacks and streetlamps that lined Cubbon and MG road.


	45. Chapter XLIII: This is not a test

**Chapter XLIII: This is not a test.**

**1830hrs, 16 December 2013, Washington D.C, United States**

_"AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR THIS IS NO DRILL." Telegram from CINCPAC on 7 December 1941._

* * *

*Beeep* *Beeep* *Beeep*

EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM

ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS LIVING IN THE WASHINGTON D.C AND FAIRFAX COUNTY AREA, A MASSIVE NATIONWIDE TERRORIST ATTACK IS UNDERWAY. TERRORISTS ARE HEAVILY ARMED AND CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGERIOUS. TARGETS INCLUDE MILITARY BASES, GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS, SHOPPING CENTERS, HIGHWAYS, POLICE STATIONS, POWER PLANTS AND AIRPORTS. LOCAL, STATE AND NATIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT HAS BEEN PLACED ON ALERT AND THE NATIONAL GUARD IS BEING MOBLIZED. IF YOU SEE OR HEAR ANY SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY OR PERSONS, CONTACT THE POLICE AND STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES AND AVOID TRAVEL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. THE SITUATION WILL BE RESOLVED AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. THE PRESIDENT WILL ADDRESS THE NATION AT 7:00 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME CONCERNING THESE ATTACKS. BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS AND STAY ALERT. THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT EVERY TEN MINUTES.

*Beeep* *Beeep* *Beeep*


	46. ChapterXLIV:Operation TAKE HOLD,PartIII

**Chapter XLIV: Operation TAKE HOLD, Part III**

**1840hrs, 16 December 2013, Somewhere over Virginia, in Air Force One, United States.**

_"Believe in your own justice." President Michael Wilson, Metal Wolf Chaos_

* * *

The president was safe and secure in the VC-25 that was flying in the sky over Virginia, escorted by a flight of two F-15Cs. The ride out of D.C and the trip to Andrews though, had been more than harrowing however.

"How many people did we lose at the Capitol building?" she said, placing her hands on her face. POTUS was still a shook up over the explosion that had taken place at the White House. She was sitting at a desk, getting ready for the speech to the nation. Around her, were several important members of her staff, some three star generals and of course, the Secret Service. And right outside the office, a military officer carried the football. The handcuffs were still stained with blood from the previous owner, who had given his life to protect the nuclear arsenal of the United States.

The COS looked at a barrage of emails and texts on his iPad and started giving the President some numbers.

"We cannot confirm any precise numbers at the time, but we know for certain that almost all of the Joint Chiefs were killed off, several senators, a good chunk of the house, two Supreme Court justices, and several foreign dignitaries."

"Goddammit, I knew we shouldn't have hired that security company, they didn't do a fucking thing!" the President's outburst increased the tension in the air. "And with that Nakanishi Group in charge of everything…"

"Madame President, we should not be rash in judging, no one saw this coming," COS said to her.

"Where is the VP?"

"He's in Mount Weather, as per the Continuity of Government plan," he said to her, his fingers moving over the screen a mile a minute. "But if what these girls say is true…"

"…then he's a traitor. Keep him under watch and don't let him leave there, whatever the cost."

"Understood."

"Where are these…SAILOR people now?"

"Last sighting of them, was…" he tapped more buttons. "They were by the Capitol building, trying to get people out of there."

"Alright." She knew that those two could take care of themselves. The COS continued on with his briefing.

"Ma'am, I'm getting reports of major attacks on military bases all across the nation," the COS said. "The following bases have been attacked and their status. Wright-Patterson AFB, major damage to infrastructure there, Travis AFB, heavy damage and casualties, MCB Quantico, light damage, Joint Base Hickam, minor damage…"

"What about the nuclear bases?" POTUS interrupted.

"They're all secure…"

"Are you sure?" she glared at him. "Because they obviously aren't, since they managed to get two warheads out into the open and attempted to detonate them."

"I'll double check." Jorge got right on that, sending out a flurry of emails to various military contacts.

"Good." Hamilton took a deep breath before continuing on with the briefing. She really didn't want to continue on with the bad news, but this was the price of being the President.

"Where is the Defense Secretary?" POTUS asked COS.

"He's on a foreign trip to Canada and was supposed to get back today, but he's still in the air with an escort."

"Get him on the video link."

"Got it."

Within a minute, a screen had been rolled down and the president was speaking directly to the Secretary of Defense, who was flying over Vancouver at the moment.

"Secretary Freidman," the President said to him, trying to remain calm in the obviously deteriorating situation. "You must know by now about the terrorist attacks on our nation."

"I have heard about the situation," SecDef told her. He wasn't much the speaking type, but now they needed to formulate a plan of action.

"Where are the JCS?"

"Most of them are dead," the President told him, wearily. "They were shot down in their own homes or on the bases…" She looked up to see Ramirez show her his tablet computer. It read "Update, 36 out of the 38 four stars are MIA or status unknown. Presume to be KIA."  
"Shit, did you hear about this?" she asked SecDef. "How the f…how did this happen?" COS tapped on more buttons and shrugged. "I'll get back to you on that," was the nonverbal response.

"What about?"

"We just lost almost all of our four stars. There's one left in the south somewhere, and he's in charge of some training program for the Air Force. The other one is General Oliver Martin, and he's in charge of CYBERCOM."

"So almost every four star General in the United States military is dead?" Friedman asked the president, tapping his pen nervously on his desk. "Goddamn."

"What suggestions do you have?"  
"We need to establish a temporary JCS until we can get this entire thing settled. Who can you give me that can fulfill these positions?"

"I'm going to suggest that we give the remaining Air Force four star the acting Vice Chair, and General Oliver Martin the new Chairmanship of the JCS. Aren't we supposed to ask Congress about this though?" Friedman was well versed on constitutional issues, being an extremely smart lawyer and all; it was also rumored that he had a degree in theoretical physics, but that could not be confirmed at the moment.

"SecDef, most of Congress is dead or out of commission at the moment, as is most of the Judicial branch. I think I won't be judged to harshly for my actions."

"They still will, you know."

"Thank you for that reminder, Secretary," the President hissed. "Get whatever you need, but I need a new JCS ASAP so we can hit back at Nakanishi."

"Understood, Madame President." The video link cut out, and the President leaned back in her chair, exhausted.

"Ma'am we're getting preliminary causality reports from across the country," Jorge said to her. He didn't even allow her a moment's worth of rest.

The President sighed, but this was the cost of running a nation, especially in times of crisis. "Go ahead."

"We've lost 10,000 KIA in military personnel across the globe," the COS announced, with no emotion in his voice. "Another 10,000 are wounded or missing."

"What about civilians?"

"Again, these are all preliminary, but maybe 20,000 people have been killed or wounded." POTUS breathed out on that one; she thought the COS was going to say "Dead." It could have easily been one dead, and 19,999 wounded, but she knew that wasn't the case.

"That's about ten times the September 11 attacks," she sighed. "Fuck."

She looked around the desk again. POTUS hoped that the Resolute desk in the Oval Office was okay. She thought about that again, and laughed at that. Here she was, in the midst of the worst terrorist attack ever to happen, and she was thinking about furniture.

"Madame President?" COS asked her quizzically.

"I'm sorry Jorge," she replied. "Just some stupid thoughts. Get me in contact with the SAILOR team."

"Right away."

* * *

"Madame President," Amy said over her radio. She and Mina were still in the SUV from the Orange, VA engagement. "Let's put the siren and lights on!" Mina excitedly said upon finding out that they indeed, had a yelper and lights, much to Amy's irritation. But in a time of crisis, she would have done so anyway driving through the fierce battle raging in Washington D.C. against the Nakanishi PMC.

"Amy, what's the situation?"

Amy dodged several cars in the road, their owners had long fled when the fighting had began.

"Goddammit Amy!" Mina screamed. "Look out!" Two Nakanishi Hummers pulled up by the SUVs and gave chase.

"Mina, get on the fucking minigun!" Amy screamed back. This was not the time for pleasantries. "Madame President, I'm going to have to get back to you on that!" she tossed the radio on the seat beside her.

Mina scrambled back there, trying to remember how she had used this infernal thing earlier that day…or was it a couple of minutes ago? It truly had been a long day, and they were both running on less than a couple hours of sleep from the last three days or so.

"I'm trying, I'm trying!" she replied back, frantically.

"Try harder!" Amy dodged some more cars that were on fire.

Mina sat on the gunner's seat, and found the switch to power on the minigun. Immediately, it started to spur up, giving an ominous whir as the barrels twirled around.

Amy looked back at the gun, hoping that Mina didn't kill them all with that thing.

But she managed to get it all ready. Mina took a deep breath, and hit the switch that popped the gun out of the roof of the SUV.

"Won't you people just give up!" For the second time today, she had to kill some more Nakanishi Mercs. At least it was with the Minigun.

In a second, Mina was out in the cold air, looking around for targets; the first Hummer was right next to them on the right side, while the other one was trailing slightly behind them on the left, about fifty feet to be precise.

She saw the Hummer on the right start to cut Amy off, and some of the windows rolled down, their occupants brandishing FN SCAR rifles. Taking a deep breath in, feeling the cool air rush into her lungs, Mina pressed the button that would fire the weapon.

Three seconds later, the bullet riddled Hummer crashed into a storefront, completely shattering windowpane.

Mina quickly swung the Minigun around to her six o'clock, only to find that the second Hummer was now weaving left and right rapidly, throwing off her aim. She fired a couple more bursts, but missed or only managed a couple of hits. The occupants of the massive SUV obliged, leaning out of their windows to fire their SCAR rifles. Several bursts zipped by before a single bullet grazed Mina, drawing blood from her left shoulder and causing her to cry out in pain.

"Fuck!" she held her shoulder, but the pain made her focus more. She used the HUD to lead the target, and concreted fire with a long burst from the Minigun. This time, the windscreen of the Hummer was shattered by the volley of fire, and it too crashed.

"Mina, you okay up there?!" Amy yelled out, trying to avoid more burning cars.

"I'm hit!" she screamed back. Mina ducked back down into the SUV so that Amy could treat her.

Amy pulled the car over, making sure that there were no more Nakanishi vehicles pursuing them.

"Here, let me see that." She pulled out a first aid kit from the front and took a look at Mina's shoulder. It was a long gash, but there was no penetration by the bullet, just a lot of blood and some pain.

"Putting your residency in?" Mina joked, then winced in pain as Amy put some peroxide to clean the wound.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that." While rifling through the first aid kit, she found the small, one use tube of gel that she had seen earlier. It read; "HEALING SOLUTION, Mk I."

"Great…" Amy said. "They're selling this shit now."

"What is it?"

Amy held up the tube to Mina so that she could see it.

"Hmm." She saw the price on the side of the tube; "12,000 USD". Ouch.

Amy opened the tube up and placed the solution on Mina's wound. Within seconds, the gash was completely healed, with no scarring or anything. A white ooze now dripped down Mina's shoulder, and Amy quickly wiped it up with some gauze.

"That could seriously be misinterpreted," Mina said, looking on.

"Shut up," Amy rolled her eyes and finished cleaning up.

"Thanks."

"Not a problem." Amy put the first aid kit away. "Let's finish up here and go after the main baddie?"

"Right on," Mina said, with a smile.

Amy crawled back into the driver's seat and continued her route toward Crofton, out of the city and toward Highway 50.

"Madame President," Amy said, finally getting back on the radio. "I'm sorry about that, we were ambushed."

"That's quite alright," POTUS replied, calmly. She shuffled some more papers and looked up to see the TV cameras being rolled in. "You'll have to make this quick, I have a speech to give."

"Understood." Amy swerved to avoid some police cars screaming down a street, presumably going toward the Capitol building. "We have the location of the PMC leader, and we are on the way to apprehend him."

"I understand…"

"Madame President," Amy continued. "I highly advise to check all equipment; since Nakanishi is a tech company, any of their equipment could be used to monitor communications and track your location."

The President forgot about that. They had gotten so used to what Nakanishi gave them that they paid no attention; now in their time of need, their technological solution was completely against them.

"Thank you for bringing that up," POTUS said to Amy. She paused for a second, consolidating her thoughts before continuing on. "In addition, I know that you've been operating illegally in our country, but for good reason. I am authorizing full use of US military installations and materiel, and that you be granted access to these facilities. You obviously have a better hold of this situation than we do, and in the next couple of weeks, we will be completely tied up in trying to get everything fixed on our end." POTUS checked her watch, and realized that her speech time was approaching.

"I must be going now, I have to give this speech. I trust that you understand the power I am giving you. My only condition is that you keep me personally informed of your operations…and don't worry; you're secret is safe with me. I will have to divulge your secret to my military advisors, but other than that…" She trailed off, making her point known.

"Understood, Madame President," Amy replied. She wanted to say something else, but this was no time for small talk. "Out."

With that, Amy cut off the transmission and accelerated toward the highway.

* * *

The President sighed. She looked at the television cameras in the office, ready to broadcast over satellites and to the major TV networks, over the Internet, over the radio.

"Ready?" one of the producers said, nervously. They had just lost a lot of people down there, and the office of the President had press-ganged anybody who knew how to use a camera to help with the broadcast.

POTUS nodded, and the producer counted down. Three…two…one.

"Good Evening, my fellow Americans. As you know, our nation is currently under attack by well-armed and organized terrorists who threaten our very existence and our way of life. I have the military on full alert (read, as possible when most of the leadership was dead), and I have all the law enforcement agencies assisting in dealing with the threat. The Department of Homeland Security is setting up command and control stations and has engaged in damage control operations. I know most of you are terrified by these recent events; I am as well."

Jorge and the producer looked at the President. That most definitely wasn't in the speech, but she was the President; she could take it in any direction she wanted.

"Not just an hour ago, there was an assassination attempt on my life by the Nakanishi Group, the perpetrators of this terrorist attack. In addition, they attacked Congress, and many of our top leaders are dead at the moment. I have credible information that points to them behind these events of today. However, this is not the work of the normal everyday employee of Nakanishi; do not take retaliatory action against people you know that have affiliations with this group. We will find the perpetrators and justice will be upheld in this nation. Please stay indoors and observe instructions from local authorities concerning the situation in your area. I know that this nation can pull it through, and even in this time of our darkest hour, we can still show the world that we will prevail in the face of adversity. Good night, and God Bless America."

The cameras and lights turned off. That was it. A simple, two minute speech to get it all out there. Hamilton relaxed slightly, blinking away the harsh stage lights, but she was very aware of what she had done.

The United States was at war with the Nakanishi Group.

* * *

"Madame President, what are your orders?" The COS was standing nearby, of course, and was waiting for her instructions on what to do next. Normally, it would be the other way around, but all the meetings, all the meet and greets, all the fancy dinners…they had been quite literally, blown out of the water. There was but one item on the agenda. Survive.

"Where exactly are we headed?"

"To Colorado Springs, the Cheyenne Mountain complex. We modified the crisis plan so that you would be taken there in times of a crisis, and now, well, now more than ever, seems like a good plan.

"What about my family?" There had been almost no time to think about that; the priority lay squarely on ensuring the safety and protection of POTUS. But now that they had gotten through all of that, they could finally focus on the safety of the First Family.

"Your…hold on, Madame President." COS picked up a phone nearby and dialed for the secure location that the First Gentleman was being held.

* * *

Agent Greyson had only been transferred from the Vice Presidential detail a week earlier, after he was finally deemed too much of a hassle when it came to that infernal Nakanishi Group. Now here he was, protecting (along with a dozen or other so more agents), in a safehouse somewhere in countryside. The First Gentleman was slouched on the sofa, glass of whisky in hand, while the two daughters where huddled nervously in the corner, tapping away on their computers and whispering in soft tones, trying to make themselves not heard to the agents nearby. The phone on a lightstand suddenly ran, startling everyone. Greyson went over and answered it.

"Agent Greyson speaking. Who is this?"

"This is the Chief of Staff for POTUS."  
"Challenge word, Picasso."

"Rembrandt."

Greyson sighed. It really was the COS. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"Is the First Gentleman and children safe?"

Greyson took a look at the First Family, who were still in somewhat of a shock. The girls were in their last week of school before the winter break, and the First Gentleman had been out on charity work when the call came in to evacuate them. Violently, they had been swept up from their afterschool activities and places of work, and shoved into waiting SUVs, driven to helicopters, and flown to the safehouse. To say that it was a traumatizing experience was an understatement.

"Yes sir, SANGUINE is safe at the secure location."

"Can POTUS speak to them at least?" the COS asked, politely.

"Sir…"

"Agent, please," was the response to his hesitation.

There was an audible sigh, but the Agent on the other line couldn't say no. He handed the phone over to Mr. Hamilton, and a gruff voice answered the phone.

"Hello? Hello?!"

"Mr. Hamilton," the COS said.

"It's Dr. Hamilton," was the angry response. Maybe the Secret Service guys shouldn't have let him have some of that whisky. Then again, it wasn't hard to see why anyone wouldn't want a drink after today.

Jorge rolled his eyes; even in a crisis, the First Gentleman was kind of a prick. Never mind that his wife almost just got shot, he was going to go on and on about what honorific he was to be called. I got my fucking degree from Johns Hopkins, blah blah blah. Yeah, that was nice and all, but you're still subservient to the President. Tough luck.

"Dr. Hamilton, your wife wishes to speak to you."

"About fucking time. You know how long I've been trying to get these idiots to call you?"

"No sir."

"Two hours! Ever since this emergency began, we've…"

"Sir, your wife." The COS immediately handed the phone over to POTUS, who rolled her eyes and thanked the COS for putting up with her idiot of a husband.

"Jack, how are you doing?" she calmly asked, glad to hear his voice after a day of immense stress and violence.

"I'm just fine, thanks to the goons that are protecting me."

"Don't give them a hard time, okay? And plus, you didn't get shot at today."

That seemed to calm him down a little bit anyway, knowing that he was in a much better position than she was.

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

She paused for a second, then continued on. "How are the kids?"  
Jack looked to his daughters, who were now standing up from their computers, having guessed who was on the other line.

"Jamie is a bit shaken up, but Emma seems to be holding it together. It's been a rough day for them as well."

"I can imagine. Can you put them on?"

"Yeah."

He motioned to the two daughters, and they leapt over to the phone. They crowded around the receiver, happy to speak to their esteemed mother.

"Mom!"

"Hey Jamie, Emma. How are you holding up?"  
"We're doing fine, mom," Emma said to POTUS. She was the older one, with strawberry blonde hair, with a bit of a stomach (but was just fine in her eyes) aged fifteen years old. She was studious, introverted, and preferred books to boys; she was a good piano player and an even better fencer, hence the callsign "SABRE". "It was disconcerting when they came and took us away. I hope everyone is alright back at school."

"I'm sure that they are," POTUS lied. She had seen from some reports that a bomb had gone off in that area not an hour after they had left, killing five and wounding twenty more. More than likely, it was directed at them, if not for the quick thinking of the Secret Service.

"Mommy?" Jamie, aged twelve, with slightly darker hair than her sister. She was more energetic and emotional than her sister; among her recent escapades was her trying to get a boyfriend and failing spectacularly at that. All attempts (so far) to sneak out at night were thwarted by the Secret Service to humorous effect. She certainly lived up to her callsign, SPEEDY. Her voice trembled as she spoke into the phone, her sister resting her hand on her shoulder to comfort her. "Mommy, I was really scared today."

"It's going to be alright," POTUS assured her. "I'm going to get this entire thing sorted out."

"Do you know when we're going to be able to speak to you again?"

"No, I don't. Sorry. Okay sweeties, I have to get back to work. Be good to your father for me, okay?"

"Yes mom!" The two of them handed the receiver back Dr. Hamilton.

"Hey Hon, I have to go. Talk to you later and try not to overdo it on the whisky, okay?"  
Damn, she could probably smell me through the phone, he cursed to himself. "Alright then. You take okay? Get these bastards who did this us."

"I will. I will."

With that, she hung up the phone and nodded to COS. They got back to work immediately.


	47. Chapter XLV:Operation TAKE HOLD, Part IV

**Chapter XLV: Operation TAKE HOLD, Part IV**

**2000hrs, 16 December 2013, ****Crofton, Maryland, United States**

_"Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed." Pericles, The History of the Peloponnesian War._

* * *

The lone SUV drove down Highway 50, and took a left off of the empty road into a wildlife preservation area that was much like Orange, VA, but with the intent of preserving the wildlife…and stuff. Nephrite winced as he touched the bullet wound in his arm that had been inflicted by those infernal SAILOR…scouts? Soldiers? Yes, that was an appropriate name for them. SAILOR Senshi, heh.

"We're here," the driver told him.

"That was tough getting out of the city," Kruger said, taking off his helmet and wiping his brow with a handkerchief. "Thought those police would never give up."

"Well, we were the police," Nephrite said bitterly, "Until Beryl asked us to attack. We might have succeeded in killing a great deal of Congressmen, but the President is alive, and the military is still functional despite the loss of all of their major leadership. That's how it's supposed to work; they've planned this better than we have." The assassinations of most of the four star generals went fairly well at least; for a multi-continental operation, having security contracts with most of the military was extremely helpful. You didn't need to breach security if you _were_ the security.

Nephrite rolled down the window of the SUV and took a look around. Trees, bare of their leaves surrounded him, the snow on the ground shimmering the silence of the winter night.

"This is Sjaal One, Sjaal One to all units, come in." Kruger worked on the radio, trying to raise anybody. "Sir, I'm not reaching anyone."

"Give it some time, they're probably held up by the police or the military,"

"We can't wait here forever," Kruger said to him. "They'll find us."

"I know. But we can afford some time. Trust me."

Kruger simply shrugged and went back to the radio.

Nephrite continued to stare out of his window. His mind now drifted to Molly, who was a scant couple of miles away, probably holed up in that cold, damp, dark cottage that they spent the summers in.

"Max…?" he could hear her voice asking. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Trying to take over the world?" Her innocence really got on his nerves sometimes, but that was all part of the charm.

"Just 'cause," would be his response.

"A just cause? What would that be?"

Nephrite sighed. "It's the way that this has to go down. Sometimes, you have to break a couple of eggs to make an omelet."

"Max, you know that's not right, and I know, that you know, that I know, that's not right at all."

"Stop talking in circles. You're not making any sense."

Molly crossed her arms and glared at him. "I think the situation is reversed here, Max. You're the one that's not making any sense. You've just taken the largest corporation on the face of the Earth and tossed its future out of the window. You could have waited. You had all of the money, the technology, the contracts, everything. The United States was completely under your thumb, Japan was under your control, the United Kingdom was opening up, China, South Korea, Taiwan, all of them soon reduced to mere shadows in the face of the rising of our corporation. We could have been great again, Max. But you just couldn't have waited, now could you? Nice job there." Molly slow clapped, her mouth forcing a grimaced smile. "I never took you for a fool, Max. But you've fucked up. Big time."

"Sir!" Kruger's voice snapped him out of his debate.

"What is it?"

"Over there." Kruger pointed down the road to a lone pair of headlights coming up the road…Bottner, that was a pretty odd name for a road. Oh well, at least someone had made it this way. The SUV continued to drive up, slowly, as if there was something wrong with it.

"Did you hear the President speak?" the driver was chatting idly. "I had it tuned into the radio, but you seemed busy."

"Yeah, she sounded like she was scared shitless," Kruger chuckled. "We showed them, that's for sure."

"We lost a lot of good guys out there," the driver continued on.

"That's for sure," Kruger said. "But they knew what they were getting themselves into."

Finally, the SUV pulled up beside them, and the driver rolled down the window.

"Hey you fuckers, what took so long?!" he yelled out.

He was answered by a M4 shot to the face, his brains splattering all over Kruger.

"Fuck!" Kruger drew his M9 pistol and got off a couple of rounds before he was quickly riddled with bullets.

Nephrite rolled down his window and fired his Calico, but felt a sharp pain as a bullet hit near his chest area. Another snapped through his shoulder. He fell back into the car seat, gasping for breath.

* * *

"Nice shooting," Amy said to Mina, who was holding the still smoking M4 in her hands.

"I try," Mina grimaced, ejecting the spent magazine and shoving a new one. She had killed way too many people today.

"Let's get this guy." Amy stopped the SUV and got out, with Mina doing the same, making sure to cover the other vehicle as Amy approached, her Glock 26 in hand. She opened up the driver's side; dead…and dead. She moved to the right passengers' door. Nephrite lay there, bleeding out, breathing extremely hard. He coughed extremely hard, some blood sputtering out as he did so. He winced in pain.

"Nice to see you again," Amy said.

Nephrite coughed some more, bleeding out from his wounds. "Jesus, you two are something else." He was speaking in Japanese, and for once, Amy and Mina could finally speak their own language here. It was tough enough trying to speak English.

"Well, we were well trained," Mina coldly said. "Wonder who set that part up."

"Don't rub it in," Nephrite weakly smiled. "I was just contemplating that fact right now."

"What a coincidence," Amy said. She looked at him; he was in pretty bad shape, and getting him fixed up was probably beyond her scope of care. Without a trip to a hospital, he would certainly die and Amy was in no mood to take him there. At least that first aid kit was certainly getting a workout today. Maybe they had another one in this car, and make his final hours here comfortable.

"It's in the front seat, on the passenger's side," Nephrite said, reading her mind. Amy just gave him a look, and went to go get the kit, while Mina kept her eyes on him.

"You're not too bad looking," Nephrite whispered, conserving his energy. "You kind of look like that Serena person."

"Hmph."

"But I still love my girlfriend," he babbled on. "She's so nice. Sweetest girl you'll ever meet. Makes a damn good scrapple and apple pie."

"What's scrapple?" Mina asked, her interest finally peaked.

"It's…"

"Excuse me, Mina." Amy was back with the First Aid kit, and she was ready to work.

"Go on, Amy will fix you up," Mina winked at Nephrite.

"Uh-huh," Amy mumbled, not happy that Mina was trying to make friends with the enemy. But that's the way you had to play it sometimes, like it or not.

"Scrapple…scrapple…" Nephrite muttered. "It's…it's kind of like sausage. Ish. It's got all the leftovers…" He started to fade in and out.

"Stay with me," Amy said, getting out the necessary equipment to keep him alive for a little bit longer. "Keep him talking."

"Tell me more about your girlfriend," Mina asked. "What's her name?"

"Molly. Molly Baker. Nice girl. Sweetest girl you'll ever meet. Makes a damn good…"

"You told me that already," Mina interrupted. "What else about her?"

"I met her when she was working for the advertising division…she's now my personal assistant when I'm in the States."

"And when you're not?" Mina was onto something here.

"I do just fine…" Nephrite now had a giddy look on his face, like a little kid telling you his favorite story. Well, this was a variation on that, just more adult. And with more blood. Lots more blood.

"Where are your other friends?" Mina continued on.

"What other friends?"

"You know…the other officers in the company?"

Nephrite paused for a second, as if trying to remember what they looked like. "Oh…them. Heh, almost forgot about them, I was so busy with this operation. I dunno."

"Come on, Nephrite," Mina chided, but trying to the pry the information out of him. "I know that you know where they are."

Amy hooked up an IV to Nephrite, and cleaned out the wounds. She reached for another of those single use tubes of the healing solution.

Nephrite shook his head when he saw her reaching for it. "No…no. None of that stuff."

"Why not?" Amy asked, intrigued.

He hesitated for a second before continuing. "Don't…don't want it go to waste."

"You're pretty important," Mina flattered him. "Surely you would want some of this."

Nephrite scoffed that that. "You two are sure persistent. But no, please."

Amy looked at the small tube, but she put it away. His loss.

"Alright then," Mina said. She decided to try another approach to this question. "When did you start planning this operation?"

"Heh, I guess I can tell you that." Nephrite sat up, wincing from the pain. He started to reach in his left chest pocket.

"Hey!" Amy pulled out her Glock and trained it on him.

"Just a smoke." He slowly pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes.

"Care for one?"

"No, thank you," Mina replied, smiling. Amy just glared and stood back, letting Mina do the interrogation. She holstered her weapon.

He took out a lighter as well, making Amy flinch once more. Mina figured he was just jerking her chain, seeing how on edge she could get sometimes. Nephrite lit the cigarette and took a pull, letting the cacogenic smoke fill his lungs.

"Yeah…that's the stuff."

"Nephrite," Mina said, a little bit of annoyance slipping through.

"I'm getting there." He took another drag before explaining. "A couple of years ago, Beryl…you do know who Beryl is, right? Good. She started to plan this entire operation. All by herself. It was done within a couple of days for crying out loud. What a woman."

Mina noted that Amy was taking notes on her tablet computer, as if at a lecture about the Taisho period in Japanese History than the plans for a plot to take over the world.

"Anyway, she called the COOs in for a meeting. By this point, Yamada has been addicted to coke for a couple of years, so he's in pretty bad shape. He finally managed to get off that stuff, but recently, yeah. So, Beryl comes in and tells us the plan. I have my doubts, but it could work. One of the COOs doesn't like it and tries to walk out. So do you know what she does…?"

Mina felt like this was going nowhere, but maybe they could get something out of it. "Let me guess, she shot him."  
"Close enough. She tossed him out of a window. Then that Jadeite guy came in and the plan began in earnest. The rest…well…the rest of it is History."

"Where did you plan to go after all of this?"

"Well, I wasn't planning on going anywhere, but since you two botched my plans I was going to Soco…"

He stopped, knowing that he had gone too far.

"Socotra?" Amy finished. "We know all about that." That was a bluff, but Nephrite didn't know that.

His eyes widened a little bit, but then relaxed. "Figures. You girls…let me tell you, you're smarter than we thought. I don't even know much about it myself though…never been there."

"Uh-huh," Mina replied. She coughed a little bit from Nephrite's cigarette, which was almost at the filter. He took one last drag before discarding it, and then reached for another one of them.

"So, is that where all the COOs are located?"  
Nephrite figured he was caught. He was about to die, his girlfriend in the dark about his plans, the reputation of the company ruined, the most powerful nation on Earth, plus everyone else completely and utterly pissed off at their actions today. Yeah. He had nothing to lose. Nice job, Beryl, he thought. I'm going to spill the fucking beans, and there's nothing you can do about it. Hehe.

"Nah. Beryl's there, along with Kunzite, but all of the other COOs are in their respective HQs of Nakanishi operations for their region."

"Why aren't you?" Amy asked, quietly. She was slowly warming up to this man, as evil as might be. Was he that evil though? What separated him and her? Those were questions that she couldn't really answer.

"Come again?"

"Why aren't you camping out in your HQ?"

"I'm more of a hands on person. I liked to tour the places we bought, the operations we had here, everything. We bought a lot of stuff here, let me tell you…" Nephrite's hands trembled a little bit, and he started to sway back and forth, his eyes going a little out of focus. Mina stepped forward and steadied him, placing her hands on both his shoulders and keeping him upright.

"Thanks…I think. We bought up so much shit here…crops, buildings…heh, we were making the United States our own little colony and the bastards didn't even see it coming. We would make sure that Japan would be secure…enough food…resources…fuel…everything to bring us back to what people knew us to be."

Mina and Amy looked at each other on that one. Now that was a scary thought.

"And what was it that people knew Japan to be?" Amy asked, stepping more into the interrogation.

"Please, you two should know better than I could ever understand. Japan is a lost cause. In a hundred years, there will be no more Japan. Our government is deadlocked. They can't get anything done. The fuckers in the Diet think that they can legislate their way out of everything. Now they're concerned about the recession? We've been in a fucking recession for twenty years. And do you know who's the only one to prop everything up? We. Nakanishi. The Center of the West. Showing everyone else that we can do it. Japan is more than anime, more than manga, more than all of those things that everyone thinks we are. We are not a nation of Otaku, or Hikikomori, or NEETs. We are hardworking, loyal, dedicated and resolute. Our culture…our history…our pride…our very existence is threatened by our so-called neighbors and the United States cuddles up with them, leaving us out to dry, like a used condom or something. We have the future in our hands. Or had, anyway." He chuckled to himself, appreciating the circumstances in which he found himself.

"You done?" Amy was getting tired of his monologue.

"Yeah…I guess I am."

"I've just got one more question," Mina asked.

"What is it…Mina?" He said the name with a smile.

"Why did you pick us? Why the SAILOR Program?"

"I'm sure that you've talked to our good friend, Chung…Zhong…however you say his name. It's just like he said. We needed bodies. You just drew the short straw. That's all."

"That's it?"

"Yeah, that's it. I'm sure Zhong told you all of this earlier. As for the SAILOR Team…well, we needed someone to do our dirty work for us…to throw off the trail of our plans before we executed our master plan. You weakened the infrastructure and all…"

"Not if we can help it," Amy retorted. "We will stop you."

"Not my problem anymore," he snorted, smoke coming out of his nose. He took another puff, and then tossed the cigarette away, reaching for a third one. "You do what you guys need to do. I won't stop you. Like I said, I'm done for."

Amy motioned to Mina to step back and enter into a more private conversation. Mina did so, leaving Nephrite to puff smoke rings in the frigid air.

"Looks like we've got everything we can out of him." Amy glanced back at him.

"Yeah, I get that feeling too," Mina replied.

Nephrite couldn't really tell what they were saying, but he didn't care. It was all over. That blonde one was cute, but the blue haired…? Heh, blue hair. Nice. She looked kind of cute too, like his Molly. Damn, I should call her. He thought about reaching for his cell phone, but decided against it as Amy was too trigger happy right now.

"What's our next move?"

"Well, the military will be cleaning up everything. I think that we need to get rid of their leadership before they wisen up and completely cloister themselves in Socotra."

"What is Socotra, anyway?"

"Where." Amy's fact checking was way ahead of Mina's.

"Where is it?"

"It's an island off the coast of Yemen. Nothing much there, other than some small towns and such. Nice place to set up a base of operations though, if you wanted to keep secrets."

"And have the money," Mina pointed out.

"And have the money, indeed." Amy shuffled around, trying to keep a little bit warm. She rubbed her hands to keep them warm.

Mina surprised her (again) when she took them, holding them in her own. They were soft and warm, not the hands of a soldier, but the hands of someone who was at heart, innocent and in way over their head in the situation that they found themselves in. Amy blushed, appreciating the gesture but she didn't feel comfortable when Mina did stuff like that. She pulled away, putting her hands in her pockets. Mina did the same, and to Amy's relief, didn't seem upset that she had pulled away from her.

"What about Nephrite?" Mina asked, taking another look at him.

"What about him?" Amy snorted. "We leave him here. He's going to be either dead or in jail."

Mina shrugged. "Okay then."

"Let's finish this already."

Amy and Mina finished talking and walked over to Nephrite.

"Alright, Nephrite," Amy said. "You can stay here, while we go clean up the huge mess you and your comrades have left us."

He smiled at that. "Of course."

The two of them started to walk away, when he called out to them.

"Can you do one last thing for me?"

Amy was about to say no, but Mina stepped in. "Yeah."

"Tell my girlfriend everything. And that I loved her."  
Amy's lips were pressed tight at that request. "I don't think…" she started.

"We'll do it," Mina replied, cutting Amy off.

He closed his eyes. "Thank you." He slid down in the car seat, slumped over the armrest.

"You done here?" Amy asked Mina. "Want to hold hands with him or something?"

Mina closed her eyes, a little bit irritated at Amy's anger, but she was right. Nephrite had probably gotten to her in that conversation.

"Nah," Mina said. "Let's get going. We've got a world to save."

As Amy and Mina approached their car, they were interrupted by a message from the President over their radio.

"Mina, Amy, this is the President."

"Yes Madame President," Amy immediately responded. It struck her as very unusual to be talking this candidly with the President all of a sudden.

"I just got a call from one of my remaining commanders in Japan, at Yokota Air Base."

Mina vaguely remembered going to the base for "Friendship Day," an annual event held there to help bolster cooperation (and create good PR) between the locals and the US military.

"Yes, what about it?"

"They have three girls in custody, and it appears that they were being chased by the Nakanishi PMC."

"Yep, they're with us," Amy immediately replied. She didn't need to have any more confirmation; whatever was going on in Japan, it was going south for the SAILOR Team at the moment, and seeking refuge at one of the largest Air Bases in the Pacific was a sound move.

"What identifying characteristics do they have?" the President asked.

"Er, one of them has prosthetic legs, one a prosthetic left arm, a one with a couple of fingers missing. One of them is a little bit chubby as well." Mina snickered at the not-so subtle dig that Amy got off at Serena.

"Okay, that's them then. By the way…they arrived in a Bugatti Veyron and were packing lots of weapons."

Amy did not want to know where they got that from.

"Are they alright?"

"Yes, they're doing fine. That's all I wanted to know."

"One other thing, Madame President," she said.

"Yes?"

"We got the COO of Nakanishi North America. We'll send the location to the local police, but he's given us the location of the other officers."

"Understood. Thank you."

"Not a problem, Madame President."

The transmission ended almost as soon as it began. POTUS had a lot of work ahead of her, and Amy didn't exactly envy her at the moment.

"Come on," she motioned to Mina, who was staring at the slumped over body of Nephrite. "Let's go."

They left, leaving Nephrite to die in that cold SUV, alone in a foreign land.


	48. Chapter XLVI:Operation TAKE HOLD, Part V

**Chapter XLVI: Operation TAKE HOLD, Part V**

**0800hrs, 17 December 2013, Near Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom**

_"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Winston Churchill._

_"London is the only city on earth where people attempt to fight The War on Terror using_ _boredom_."_ Adam Hills._

* * *

Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) Kelly Dunn was supposed to be on "high alert," but there really wasn't much that she could do. She was thirty years old, with brown hair, fair complexion and average weight. A graduate of the University of York, but had moved down south and bounced from job to job until she applied to become a PCSO (and got a lot of "Oop North" jokes in the process). She wasn't authorized to carry a weapon, she wasn't authorized to arrest anybody…basically, she was a glorified civilian in a "police" uniform. If she caught somebody in a crime, then all she could do about it was sit on them until the "real" police showed up. She was set to patrol around Whitehall and the surrounding areas, making sure that the tourists were alright and stuff, and on the lookout for any "suspicious" people. At least it was a nice, crisp, clear day outside, and for a change, the sun was actually out. The snow crunched underneath her boots as she patrolled around, trying to look important. She had heard of the terrorist attacks taken place around the world, but it seemed like the UK was dodging the bullet at the moment. Kelly had heard some stories of the Ministry of Defence having its databases hacked, and mobile service was out in certain parts of the country, but if cyberattacks were all that the terrorists could do, there really wasn't much to worry about…right?

There was a TV crew from BBC Two in the middle of the square, doing their thing; terrorist attacks or not, they were going to shoot their show and have it in for the premiere of the new series. One of the hosts of the show, a large, portly man, was by a BMW M3, gleefully showing it off and mocking the other two hosts of the show who were standing by a Mercedes E-Class and a Porsche Boxster.

"And that's why we're checking out why German Cars are the best…in the world," he delivered in a growly, throaty voice. He was kidding around with the other hosts though, and took out a cigarette to light it.

Suddenly, a loud explosion emanated from Whitehall, where the Ministry of Defence was located. There was a meeting of some of the Defence ministers going on, along with some of the MPs and the PM as well.

"Goddammit!" one of the shorter hosts yelled out (he had whitened teeth as well, Kelly noted), ducking behind his Mercedes. "Clarkson, get your fucking head down!"

"Jesus, what was that?" another of the hosts said, with long wavy hair.

"How the fuck should I know?"  
"Sierra Oscar to all units, Sierra Oscar to all units, status?" the dispatcher from the command room at Whitehall Police Station announced over the radio. PCSO Kelly was actually on loan to this area of London, due to a personnel shortage concerning the winter holiday.

"This is Sierra 342," Kelly said over her radio. "I'm fine, but there's been a large explosion at Whitehall, over."

"That is affirmative; we just saw that from here. Standby for orders, Sierra 342."

"Standing by." She continued to patrol around, but obviously more alert and on the lookout for strange packages, loose bags or anything that might constitute a bomb.

Several police cars with armed police in them, screamed by with blue lights and siren on toward Whitehall. There was gunfire all of a sudden.

"Sierra 777, to Sierra Oscar," one of the armed police announced over his radio, forgetting to change frequencies. "We have several X-Rays at Whitehall, armed with AKs and pistols, requesting for more CO-19 officers to be dispatched to our location."

"Affirmative, more CO-19 officers are on the way, please…"

The radio suddenly cut out, replaced with static. Kelly hit the transmit button on her radio.

"Sierra Oscar, this is Sierra 342, come in."

Still static. She tried the radio again, but to no avail.

"What's going on?" she muttered to herself. Still continuing around the square, she suddenly noticed some people staggering out of the Charing Cross Underground station, close to where Whitehall was located. Smoke also poured out of the entrance as well, slowly dissipating as it rose up. Kelly ran over there, dodging some traffic that was trying to get away from the explosion. Gunfire continued on in the background, but it was far enough away that Kelly thought people weren't in too bad a fix. Still, they had to get people out of here, and since radios weren't working, she was going to have to make do of a bad situation.

"Johnson!" she yelled to a PC who was escorting people away from the area. "What's going on with the radios?"

"I don't know," PC Johnson replied. "The bloody thing won't work, and there's gunfire all the way down to the police station!"

"Damn," Kelly said. "I'm going to check out the Underground station, see if they're all right."

"Sergeant Devin and Sgt. McCall are on the scene there," he told her.  
"Thanks, good luck."

As she was jogging over to the station, she checked her mobile phone, just to make sure that she wasn't missing anything. Service was down as well.

"Kelly!" Sgt. McCall yelled to her as she approached the station. "Kelly, help me with this woman over here!"

"Coming!" Kelly kneeled down next to McCall, who was administering first aid to an injured woman about thirty years old.

"Ma'am, ma'am, are you okay?" McCall asked her.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," the woman replied.

"Can you tell us what happened?" Kelly asked, checking over the woman for any signs of cuts, broken bones, etc.

"I was riding the train down from Seven Oaks when a bomb went off," she said, wincing in pain as Kelly found a sprained ankle.

"Inside the terminal?"  
"Yeah, yeah, inside. There was a lot of smoke and they stopped the train here…" She trailed off for a second, and McCall stopped her questioning just for a moment to let the woman recover.

"Was anyone else hurt?"

"I don't think so. I saw some of your guys down there though. They passed us as we made our way out of that place."

McCall looked at Kelly. "Our guys?" Kelly asked the woman. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, they were in police uniforms. They were the armed police."  
McCall looked at the lady, then back to PCSO Kelly. She reached for her radio, but stopped when she realized that they didn't work.

"This is not good," McCall said to Kelly. "We need to get this to someone important. Can you run down to the Whitehall station and try to tell the super there that there are terrorists dressed as armed police?"

Kelly looked down the road, and could see some tracer rounds bounce off some buildings as CO19 battled with some more terrorists.

"I'll do it," she said, breathing in deeply. This might be the biggest decision of her life, and perhaps many lives could be saved by her actions.

"Thanks a bunch. Do be careful." Sgt. McCall acted if she was sending Kelly out for take-away from the local Indian restaurant rather than through a war zone. If that wasn't the classic understatement of the day, then nothing was.

"I will." PCSO Kelly took off, running as fast as she could down Northumberland Ave and taking a right, following the Thames down to where Whitehall police station was located. Errant shots whipped overhead, pinging off of the bare trees and skipping into the semi-frozen Thames. Her breath misted in the cold air, and she gasped for more as she continued her run down the street. More bullets whistled overhead, causing her to duck behind a tree. Kelly peered out from her position; she was right in back of the Ministry of Defence, which had smoke coming out of it and many of its windows were shattered. She saw a couple of gunshots from inside the building, and someone screamed from inside.

Kelly swallowed her fear and pushed forward.

From inside the MoD, one of the terrorists saw movement on the road near the Thames. He took aim and fired a couple of shots from his AR-18 assault rifle, made famous by its use by the Irish Republican Army during "The Troubles" (read, another massive case of understatement).

"Ahh!" Kelly dove to ground, huddling near a small wall at the rear of the MoD. "Damn!"

The terrorist continued to fire at her, bullets thwacking and snapping around her, slowly degrading her cover. She was scared stiff, and pinned down by enemy fire, Kelly was almost certain to be killed.

Suddenly, a burst of fire from behind her cut off the fire from the building. She looked behind her to see a CO19 officer running up to her position.

"Armed Police!" one of them yelled at her, pointing his weapon at her. "Oh, sorry," he said upon recognizing her blue epaulettes on her uniform. The CO19 officer slid next to her, taking aim with his G36C at the MoD.

"Thanks for that," Kelly said, her voice shaking from all of the stress and physical exertion.

"Not a problem." The officer squeezed off a couple more rounds before ducking behind cover. "Sergeant Nicholas Angel," he said to her. Kelly looked at his badge epaulette; it read "777". He was the officer from the radio that she had heard earlier.

"Where are you off to?" he asked her.

"I'm trying to get to the police station," she replied, pointing down the block. It wasn't far to go. "I'm trying to see the super there."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," Angel said to her.

"Uh…why not?"

"Well, he's dead." Angel popped up and fired a couple more shots. "And so is the watch commander, and half the command room, and all the equipment is gone…"

"Is that why our radios don't work?"

"Actually, that appears to be…hold on, a second." He fired some more rounds, and then ducked back down. "That seems to be a problem with the entire network throughout London, maybe even outside of it. No phones, no radios, no nothing, everything is down."

Angel fired some more rounds, but it was quickly becoming obvious that there were more terrorists than police responding, and that the situation was rapidly deteriorating.

"Come on, we can't stay here," he said to Kelly, grabbing her by the arm. "We'll get to the station, although I can't say that there's much there."

The two ran down the road, dodging more rounds fired at them, pausing only to throw the shooters off for a second, then continued to run until they reached the police station.

It was completely chaos at Whitehall station, as expected. Several bloodied officers staggered out, and some office workers tended as best they could to the wounded, who were being laid out on the parking lot grounds.

"Sir," one of the CO19 officers said to Angel. "We've secured the station, but it gets even worse."

"How?"  
"They got all the command staff, not just the super. Even the inspector is dead. The highest ranking person around is you."

"Shit."

Seeing her chance, Kelly decided to interrupt with the information about the suspicious police in Charing Cross. "Wait, I have some info," Kelly said to Angel.

Angle turned around "Which is…?"

"We were helping this woman by the Underground station, and she said that she spotted armed officers near there."

"But we don't have any…" That information clicked in his head. "Christ, there's terrorists dressed as us!"

"And without our radios, we can't find who's who in all of this!" Kelly added.

"Dammit, but where would they be going…?"

"Downing Street?"

That made sense. The PM was in his residence and was about to meet several ministers in the MoD to discuss the recent terrorist attacks in America and the rest of the world.

"You're right, I'll take a team over there and make sure everything is okay. "Stay here and try to help out."

Before Kelly could protest any further, he was gone, having taken several armed officers down the block to Number 10.

* * *

"Prime Minister, we have to get you out of here." Sir Robert was pleading with the Prime Minister Robinson, who had been just about to leave for the MoD at Whitehall before the attacks began. A couple of minutes after the assault had begun, the power had gone out at Number 10, and the security personnel deployed with MP5s and G36s at the ready but it was becoming quickly obvious that this place was not secure. The gunfight that had raged outside the MoD was starting to creep slowly the short block away from them, and the protection detail was insisting that they leave this very minute.

"Alright, let's get going then." Robinson gathered some paper up and placed them in a briefcase, and started to walk toward the back exit of Number 10, where all the cars were parked in the little square.

"PM is on the move," one of Diplomatic Protection Group officers said on his radio. There was no response. "This is Charlie 61, come in command, over."

"That's strange," the PM said to himself. "What's the problem?"

"Sir, we can't get the radios to work," Charlie 61 said to him, peering outside. There were some armed officers out there, guarding the cars. "We have to keep moving sir. Follow me."

Charlie 61 along with the other bodyguards walked outside to make sure everything was clear.

"It's all cle…"

A hail of gunfire from the "armed officers" outside cut them down.

"Shit!" The PM and Sir Robert ducked back inside Number 10 and slammed the door shut. Bullets bounced off the steel reinforced door as the gunmen tried to make him the first prime minister to be assassinated in 200 years.

"What the hell!" Sir Robert exclaimed, covering his head with one of the red boxes that they carried around with official documents and other important stuff. Their effectiveness against 9mm bullets however, was doubtful.

"Come on!" the PM said to him, tugging at Sir Robert's cuffs to get him moving. "We have to move!"

The PM and Sir Robert raced back down the hall, looking for anyone to help them. But the place was empty, as everyone had fled in the first couple of minutes of gunfire besides the DPG officers and Sir Robert and well, the officers were now dead.

"In here!" The PM and Sir Robert ran into the Cabinet Room and looked frantically around for a way to get out.

"Oh for Christ sake," Sir Robert said, peering out one of the windows in the room. The gunmen had already anticipated that move, and now were waiting outside. One of them fired off a burst, hitting the window that Sir Robert was looking out of. Thankfully, if was bullet-resistant, but as an escape route it wasn't doing much good.

The PM was on one of the phones on the long wooden table, but it was dead as well.

"Did you try your mobile?" Sir Robert yelled from across the room.

The PM looked at his iPhone that he had come to depend on ever since the first one had come out in 2007. No service.

"I don't have any service here, how about you?"

Sir Robert shook his head. "None here, Prime Minister."

A loud bang from around the corner announced the entry of the gunmen, intent on assassinating him.

"Come on Robert," he said to his Cabinet Secretary. "I'm not going down without a fight."

"Where are we going?!" Sir Robert replied, obviously flummoxed and stressed from the entire situation.

"To the Study, I've got something there."

The PM stuck his head out into the hallway to make sure that everything was clear. The gunmen had blown a hole in one of the wall and were pouring into Number 10. It would only be a matter of time before they made him an ex-PM.

But not if he could stop it.

The PM ran across the hallway and down to where the grand staircase was, and with Sir Robert close behind, they jogged up it. One of the faux armed officers saw them and pointed his MP5 at them, letting off a burst.

"Dammit!" Sir Robert exclaimed, making it up the stairs and onto the second floor. "Haven't been under fire since the Falklands." He dodged another bullet. "Or the Troubles."

"Well then, maybe you can help out then," the PM dryly replied. They made it to the study, and threw open the door.

"Behind Maggie!" the PM yelled to Sir Robert, shutting the door and closing the lock. He started to pile up furniture in front of the door, even though it would only buy some time since there were at least a couple more doors that lead into the study.

"What?" Sir Robert yelled back.

"Behind the Thatcher painting!" Good old Maggie, still lording over everyone.

Sir Robert went over to the painting and lifted it up. Behind it was a large safe.

"Coming through!" The PM finished barricading the door and had pushed Sir Robert aside. He messed with combination lock, and although Sir Robert didn't get the full combination, he swore he could have seen the Numbers from LOST.

After a second of getting the combination right, the PM opened the safe. There was a gleaming L85A2 Assault Rifle in there, along with two P226 Sig Sauer pistols in 9mm caliber, with ammunition, magazines, and bullet resistant vests.

"Wow," Sir Robert, said, looking at the equipment in there. "Impressive."

The PM tossed his Senior Secretary a vest. "Put this on. If I'm going to be the first PM assassinated in 200 years, then I'm not going down without a fight." He gave one of the P226s to Sir Robert, along with some magazines. "You know how to use one of those?"

"It's been awhile, but yes." Sir Robert put one of the magazines in the pistol and cocked it, checking to make sure the feed didn't jam or something like that.

The PM was also checking his assault rifle, putting in a magazine, charging it, and looking down the optical sight.

"I'm ready here," he said. "You good?"

"I am ready," Sir Robert Baiden (GCMG, KBE, MVO), replied. Prime Minister Michael Robinson (PC, KBE, BSc (LSE)), readied his weapon, and looked to one of the entrances to the study. He could hear the pattering of feet as the gunmen came up the stairs, and started banging away at the study door.

"He's in here!" he heard one of them yelled out. It sounded like he had an Irish accent…maybe from Cork or something like that?

"Shut up you bloody fool!" another one said. "Find another way around!"

A couple of rounds blasted through the door, in an attempt to get through. The PM fired back, pumping several bursts into the door.

"I'm hit!" one of the gunmen yelled out.

"Who the fuck is still armed! We cleared this place out!"

There was more gunfire, as the terrorists tried desperately to break through the impasse. Bullets snapped about the room, destroying vases, ripping apart books, tables and chairs, and causing a mess of things. The PM and the Senior Secretary slowly backed out of the room, exiting by the door near the fireplace. It led to another room, where the protection detail usually sat, but to the PM's dismay, three of them lay dead on the floor, their throats punctured by a very sharp knife.

"It would appear that this attack happened sooner than we thought," he noted to Sir Robert.

"It would seem that way, Prime Minister," Baiden softly replied back. They stared for a moment, but the banging on the doors quickly reminded them that there were bad guys after them, and they hunkered down, waiting for help to arrive.

Sergeant Angel ran across the street, from Whitehall to Number 10, flanked by CO19 and Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) officers, all armed with a variety of high powered weapons, from G36s, MP7s, MP5s, and M4 carbines.

"Spread it out!" he yelled to the officers. They were almost to Number 10…

Angel saw the dead bodies of the police assigned to guard the front gate and the door to Number 10. Shaking his head, he rushed past his fallen comrades and signaled for his team to stack up by the door. There was still gunfire coming from inside the house, so somebody was fighting back. Angel peeked around the entrance to the house; the door was open and he could see evidence of a fight.

Another burst of gunfire, this time, it sounded like it came from the second floor.

"Okay everyone, listen up!" he called out to the armed officers that had gathered around him. "I'm going to divide you up into three teams. Team one…" he motioned to about five officers to the right of him, "You will be going around to the back and make sure that everything is clear. Team two…" he partitioned off another five officers. "You will be clearing the first floor. The rest of you, you're with me. Okay? Move out!"

The armed officers ran to their respective assignments, while Sergeant Angel and a couple of other officers stacked up to the open entrance to Number 10. More gunfire could be heard as the terrorists engaged the police in the back. Team two went in first, sweeping the conference rooms and the hallways downstairs. Angel went in next, his G36 in the firing position as he climbed the stairwell leading to the second floor. A terrorist suddenly popped from around a corner, dressed in black fatigues as they had ditched the police uniforms when they entered Number 10. He was surprised to see a large contingent of armed officers climbing up the stairs. He started to raise his MP5A4 to fire but Angel cut him down with a burst of fire.

"X-Ray down!" he yelled out. More gunfire from around the corner. Angel stacked up and took a peek at what was going on; several more terrorists were trying to get into a locked room. One of them tried a side door, and upon finding it open, went in. A report from a L85 and some bullets knocked the terrorist down. Whoever was in there, they were putting up a good fight.

"He's in there!" one of the surviving terrorists yelled out.

"Get him!" another yelled out.

"Time to put a stop to this," Angel muttered to himself. Motioning to the other officers, they charged up the stairs and rounded the corner, aiming their weapons down the hall. Angel did the same.

"Stop!" he shouted. "Armed Police!"

Now that Angel had a clearer view, he could see that there were four gunmen, armed with MP5 SMGs and wearing ballistic vests. They hesitated at his command.

"Drop the bloody weapon!" another officer yelled out.

"Put the fucking weapons on the ground!"

Seeing that they were in a no-win situation, three of them dropped their weapons and put their hands in the air.

The last terrorist was still in indecision mode, and was wavering with his MP5 in hand, halfway between dropping it and bringing it up to shoot.

"Drop it!" Angel yelled out. "Last chance!"

The gunman sighed and dropped the SMG on the ground. The other armed officers also exhaled, and moved in to arrest the gunmen.

"You're nicked!" one of them said. "I've always wanted to say that."

Angel rolled his eyes and moved to the door that the terrorist had been trying to open. He knocked on the door, but stayed away from standing in front of it. He didn't want to get shot, that's for sure.

"Armed Police!" he yelled out. "Open the door!"

There was a moment of silence, then there was a scrambling of feet as someone came to open the door.

Sergeant Angel couldn't believe it.

The Prime Minister of the UK stood in there, armed with a L85 assault rifle, and with him, the Cabinet Secretary, holding a P226 pistol in hand. And he thought Americans were crazy with their guns.

"Thanks for showing up," the Cabinet Secretary said, a smile on his face. "We were in some trouble back there."

"Ppppp…Prime Minister?!" Angel spat out, trying to remain calm. He snapped a salute to the PM.

"No need for that…uh…" PM Robinson tried to get a look at the officer's name tag.

"Sergeant Nicholas Angel, CO19," he replied, regaining his calm.

"Nice to meet you," the PM smiled back. "I wish it was under better circumstances though."

"Of course, Prime Minister," Angel replied. "What are your orders?"

"Well, I would like to get out of here, and to a secure location. Can you provide some vehicles and an escort to RAF Northolt?"

"Yes sir, I'll ride along personally."

"Very good. Dispatch some officers to Buckingham and make sure that the Royal Family is secure and that they're out of there."

Angel nodded. "Of course."

"That's all for now. Let's get the hell out of here!"

The PM, the Cabinet Secretary, and Sergeant Angel walked out of the room. Angel immediately started barking order to the armed officers there, some for an escort detail, some for the securing of Number 10, and some to go check on the Royal Family to make sure that they had gotten away safely. Within five minutes, they were in a convoy of SUVs (not shot up by the recent gunfight), and were travelling at high speed toward RAF Northolt, through the besieged city of London.

It was later found that The Grenadier Guards, the stewards and protectionary detail of the Royal Family, were decimated, many of them gunned down in Wellington barracks across from Buckingham Palace. A whole company of elite soldiers, taken out when a NAAFI supply truck loaded with mercenaries and other types who had a beef with the British Army, entered through one of the gates at Wellington Barracks and made their way inside, slaughtering all they found. No one was spared, even the members of the esteemed band were gunned down in their rooms or trying to flee from the onslaught. A surviving platoon managed to fight their way out and to join up with a detachment at Buckingham palace, protecting the Royal family and ensuring their safety.

* * *

Police Community Support Officer Kelly Dunn was tending to the wounded outside Whitehall police station when she saw the convoy with the PM leave. She smiled at that, knowing that she had done her bit in the scale of things today.

"Kelly!" Sergeant McCall had made it over to the police station was out of breath, ostensibly from dodging all those bullets. But the gunfire was becoming less and less frequent as CO19 and the MoD Police retook the Defence Building.

"Yeah?"

"Did you tell them?" McCall gasped, trying to catch her breath.

"Yes, they just left." Kelly pointed to the convoy, which was now turning right on Parliament street.

"Very good then, carry on."

"Of course, Sergeant."

"Sergeant McCall!" Another one of the officers called out to her, and she was running toward the police station, trying to get a handle on the mess that had been created. Kelly went back to bandaging a wounded officer, making sure that all of his wounds had been cleaned, that he wasn't in too much pain, and all of that good stuff.

It was Britain's Finest Hour.


	49. ChapterXLVII:Operation TAKE HOLD,Part VI

**Chapter XLII : Operation TAKE HOLD, Part VI**

**1000hrs, 17 December 2013, Aylestone Hill, Hereford, United Kingdom**

_"We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go_

_Always a little further: it may be_

_Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow_

_Across that angry or that glimmering sea ..." The Golden Road to Samarkand_

* * *

There was a team of highly trained and experienced troopers from the 22nd SAS Regiment (or just "The Regiment"), waiting outside Anne and Alan's flat on Aylestone Hill, in Hereford. They were there on a training mission when the terrorist attacks went down, and had been put on standby for action. The information that had been relayed from the captured data from the Nakanishi HQ, to the Americans, then to the British had led them to the hackers in Hereford. The hackers had also conveniently left a nice digital footprint that led to this very location. Apparently, they weren't too smart after all.

"Right outside our own base," one of the SAS troopers, "Jordan," said, shaking his head in disbelief.

"These guys are going down," "Daimler", said to the rest of the four man team, designated as red team. "This is red troop, to Alpha-Bravo," he said over the radio to the command post. The command team was stationed in a white van (and gained the nickname, the white van men over the course of several missions) a couple of streets over, monitoring the CCTV cameras in the area.

"Alpha-Bravo, go ahead."

"When can we take these fuckers down, over?"

That got a bit of a laugh. "Calm down Red troop, you'll get that chance."

"I'm not going to let Blue troop take the glory on this one," Daimler said. "I'm taking these people down."

"I heard that," Blue troop said. Daimler rolled his eyes.

"Standby. We're almost ready on our end."

"Roger. Standing by."

Seeing that he was getting nowhere with Alpha-Bravo, Daimler tried talking to Blue troop to see if they had anything.

"Blue troop, this is Red actual, status?"

There was a moment of silence before Blue troop replied.

"This is Blue actual, we're at our designated location." The four man Blue troop was across the road in an occupied house, their owners conveniently on holiday. They were snipers and spotters, armed with AWM .338 Lapua Magnum sniper rifles, binoculars, infrared devices and scopes, a blueprint of the flat, and a couple packets of crisps to pass the time.

"Lamb and mint?" one of the Blue troop soldiers said to their leader. The guys really liked their crisps in that flavor, although Blue team leader was more partial to the cheddar and onion.

"Not now," he replied. "Red Actual, we have negative movement. The lovebirds are still in the nest, over."

Daimler chuckled at the dry humor that Blue troop sometimes exhibited on missions. "No stealing our kills, okay?"

"Right," Blue Actual said back.

"Red Actual, out."

"Goddammit, what's the fucking holdup?" trooper "George" complained. He was one of the newer members of the team.

"We'll go when they're ready," another trooper, "Baker", replied in response. He cradled his MP5SD3 in his arms.

"Easy for you to say, Baker," George sneered at him. "Not all of us have the patience for…"

"That's enough," Daimler said to him. "Alpha-Bravo, now would be a good time."

"Standby."

Daimler wanted to smash his radio right then and there, but this was how missions went. They didn't go until the higher-ups said so.

"So…did you hear what happened to Mohawk last week?" George whispered to the rest of Red troop. "Slipped on a fucking bar of soap, that's what."

"Give the kid a break," Baker said. "He beat everyone's time on the course."

"He's not 'ere in the field now, is he?" George continued. "Told you that he wasn't cut out for it."

"George, please, shut up and get ready with those breaching charges," Daimler hissed, irritated at his team's inability to stay quiet.

In the white van, Alpha Bravo was busy getting the entire details of the mission right; despite the anxiety of Red troop, their job was just as important as the operator's in the field. The equipment in there was going to be important, and after the team busted through the door, anything could happen.

A radio squawk interrupted the hum of activity in the van.

"Alpha Bravo, standby for flash message," their Brigadier said, from an operations room at Hereford.

Alpha Bravo wondered who the hell it was, as they were dealing with the details of the operation, until the person started speaking on the other end.

"This is the Prime Minister. Put me through to your unit on the ground."

The people in the command van couldn't believe it at first, but they quickly complied.

"Red troop, blue troop, standby for important message from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and of North Ireland, over." That was most definitely overblown, but hell, it was the PM talking to them.

Daimler raised an eyebrow at that.

"Shite, the PM wants to talk to us?" George said.

"Hell, if only my ex-girlfiend…ex-girlfriend did so," Jordan snarked.

"Prime Minister, Sir," Daimler replied, ignoring the banter that was going on.

"This is the Prime Minister. I understand you are about to engage on an assault."

Daimler thought that the PM would know that sort of stuff, but figured he'd leave it alone.

"That is correct, sir."

"Terminate with extreme prejudice," the PM said. "Leave no one alive. We are going to get these fuckers back with everything we have. You job is the preservation of their equipment."

"Affirmative. Will that be all?"

"That is all. Good luck. Who dares wins."

"Who dares wins. Out."

Daimler exhaled. Damn. This was turning out to be one hell of a mission, and they hadn't even attacked the target yet.

Several minutes passed again before command got back to them.

"This is Alpha Bravo. You are go for mission."

"Let's roll," Daimler said to the rest of the team. Red troop stacked up against the door and prepared to dynamically enter the flat. George placed a breaching charge, square shaped with a handle for easy placement on the door proper, while Jordan prepared a flashbang to go in after him after the charge had been detonated. Daimler and Baker would go in after them, sweeping their own sectors and making sure that the equipment was secured. Daimler nodded at George to commence the operation.

"Do it," he said. There was someone now shouting inside the flat, surprising all of them but it was now or never time.

"Breaching!" George yelled, hitting the detonator for the explosive.

* * *

Anne and Alan were still fast asleep when there was a whispering of voices outside their door.

"Goddammit," Anne muttered. "The neighbors are probably gossiping about the entire thing that went down yesterday."

"Mmm…" Alan groaned. He still wanted to sleep after spending all day hacking.

"I'll go and yell at them," she suggested, wanting him to do it.

"Yeah…whatever." Not the response she was looking for.

"Fine, fine." She got out of bed, still in her panties and a t-shirt. Anne continued to walk toward the door. She stretched and yawned, wondering if the shops were still open today, even all that had gone down, and that maybe she would pop out for a bit and grab some food. Maybe some take away…?

Anne reached the door and peered through the peephole. What she saw shocked her.

Four gas-mask wearing, black fatigue wearing, MP5 toting SAS operatives were waiting outside the door. One was placing something on the door as she watched, and said something to another one of the gas masked soldiers. She quickly scurried back from the door and yelled at Alan to get up.

"Alan!" she screamed. "Alan! It's the police!"

That woke him up quick enough.

"Destroy the computers!" he yelled back. Quickly reaching underneath his bed, he retrieved a case holding his FAMAS from his Foreign Legion days. He popped it open and jammed a magazine into the rear slot of the gun.

Alan had just finished loading the gun when the breaching charge exploded against the door, crashing it down. A flashbang soon followed, its bright light and noise breaking the still winter air. A common thug would have been stunned and blinded by the explosion, but with Alan's FFL training, this was nothing. Reacting quickly, he dropped to one knee and fired a burst from the FAMAS at the figures appearing in the door frame.

"Fuck!" George screamed. "I'm hit!" He fell back, a bullet through his arm and shoulder.

"Get him out of there!" Daimler screamed at the other two. Baker and Jordan dragged George out of the line of fire, while Daimler took a couple of shots inside with his MP5SD3. "Alpha Bravo, this is Red troop, X-Rays are armed!"

"Received, Blue troop, assist Red troop. Cleared to engage."

"Roger." Blue troop, which had been on standby for the mission, swung into action. The sniper across the road aimed through his scope and used the infrared setting to locate the two targets inside of the flat. Since there were two snipers, two targets weren't a problem; they could just take down each of them separately. Unless…

"Damn, she hiding behind the computers," one of Blue troop's snipers hissed into his radio.

"Take down the shooter then," Blue Actual said to him.

"Roger."

"At 100 meters," the spotter said to the sniper. "Wind, five kmph, humidity, thirty percent, ten degrees above the first floor."

"Adjusting." The sniper took his time, despite the desperate gunfight that was developing inside the flat.

Alan kept bobbing up and down like a buoy, staying out of the line of fire from Daimler and Red Troop, while Anne frantically was deleting everything she could from the computers.

"Daimler!" Jordan yelled. "I'm going in! Cover!"  
Daimler thought that was a bad idea, considering that this fucker had already taken down an SAS operative, which was more than what some of the people they had gone up against could say. But they had to advance or lose the data on those computers. He nodded at Jordan, who charged in, firing his SMG from the hip.

Alan saw one of the troopers run in, trying to take cover by a support pillar. This was his chance to take down another one of those stupid police, trying to ruin his life for the second time. He raised his FAMAS and took aim at the target.

Jordan whipped around the support pillar, only to realize that he was dead in the sights of the person he had been firing at all this time. This was not the way he wanted to go, but hey, these things happen in war. He lifted his MP5 up anyway, knowing that he wouldn't be able to fire off another burst, but he had to try at least.

"Send."

"On the way." The sniper fired his rifle, and .338 Lapua bullet zipped through the air, burrowing its way through the window and into Alan, severing his spine from the waist down and flopping him on the ground, unable to do much of anything.

"X-Ray down!" Blue troop reported. "Must have slapped the trigger a bit hard there…"

"Red troop, move in!" Daimler shouted. He charged in, past Jordan and ran to the workstations where he saw a woman working feverishly on the bank of computers near the wall.

Anne saw Alan go down, a flash of red from his back where the bullet impacted with his spine.

"NO!" she screamed, turning around from the computer that she was working on. She saw a black clad trooper rush in and take aim with his MP5.

SAS operators are trained to go for the head; none of that double-tap shit. Daimler aimed for her mouth and fired. The 9mm bullet penetrated the jaw and cheekbones, shattering teeth, exploded gums, turning the tongue into shredded meat. The bullet continued on back, obliterating the spine and interrupting all signals to the body, shutting it down and killing Anne instantaneously. The bullet exited and destroyed a monitor, but that was fine as long as the CPU was saved. She collapsed to the ground, her face obliterated by the bullet.

Jordan slowly approached Alan lying on the floor, his weapon lying beside him. He was slowly turning white from the blood loss, and couldn't pull himself up to fire one more shot at them.

"Sorry, lad," Jordan said to him. "Just business."

He pulled the trigger, and blew Alan's brains out.

"This is Red troop," Daimler said, seeing Jordan's handiwork. "All X-Rays down, equipment is secure."

"Roger. We're sending in the medical and the intel lads right now, secure the scene."

"Affirmative." Daimler took a look around him.

Damn, it was good to be a SAS operative.


	50. Chapter XLVIII: Perpetual Revolution

**Chapter XLIII: Perpetual Revolution**

**1330hrs, 17 December 2013, Kanaka Nagar, Bangalore, India.**

_"The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic." Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment with Russia._

* * *

Sudhir had spent much of the day hidden in his apartment as gunfire raged outside for hours on end. He didn't know what the hell was going on out there, but whatever it was, it most definitely wasn't good.

Suddenly, the door to his apartment had burst open, and a solitary figure staggered in, holding a pistol and bleeding from the head.

"Who…?" Sudhir started to say, but the man pointed the weapon at him.

"Shut up!" he screamed in Punjabi. Perhaps all those years under D.D were not wasted after all. "Stay in the corner there and don't move!"

The man looked frantically around the room, looking for any threats, any police, the military…those dammed soldiers had completely destroyed his plans and his chance to get back at the government for killing his Naxalite cause.

"Look, whatever you want, I'll give it…"

"Keep quiet!" he yelled. He continued to look around frantically. Several police cars zoomed past, but they weren't looking for him. He was pretty sure that this was the apartment where the safe house was supposed to be…right? Or was it across the street? He kept looking out of the window. Funny if they would have someone here already though.

"Are you with Jadeite?" he asked the man, cowering in the corner. He didn't respond right away. "Are you with Jadeite?!" he asked again, this time, more forcefully.

"Uhh…yeah!" Sudhir replied in English. Ramesh understood him, but continued to speak in Punjabi.

"Did he send you here?"

"Look, I just live here…"

"What about the mission?! Huh?! My team gets wiped out by this paramilitary unit, and I barely make it out alive, so Jadeite has some explaining to do!"

Ramesh kept ranting on, and Sudhir pretended to listen to his long winded speech, but all the while was trying to figure out a way to get out of this situation that he had found himself in.

* * *

"Where did the auto rickshaw guy say he dropped him off?" Iyer asked Prasad, who had been questioning several auto rickshaw drivers that might have taken their terrorist away from the main battle in the center of the city. The last person they had come across, in front of the Indian Express building, had yielded some results. After some "persuasion", Prasad had finally got him to talk.

"He said that a really bloody man came out of nowhere and asked him to give him a lift. When he asked where, the guy just told him to drive off."

"That's nice, but where?" Iyer asked again, this time more impatiently.

"Boss, where did you drop the person off?" she asked him, in Kannada. The driver was wearing a khaki shirt with matching pants, stained with chai, engine grease, and who knows what else.

The rickshaw driver shrugged. Prasad rolled her eyes and gave him a fifty rupee note.

"Now do you remember?"  
"Yeah, it was near Kanaka Nagar, at some apartment complex on 7th Cross or something like that."

Iyar looked up from playing with her mobile phone and shot a glance at the driver. "Did he say, 7th Cross?"

Prasad asked the driver again.

"Yeah, that's what he said."

"That's strange…" Iyer thought for a moment about why that sounded familiar. "Wait, remember when we had that…incident at Manyata Tech Park?"

"Yeah?" Prasad asked, turning away from the rickshaw driver, who went back to reading his newspaper. Already, the headlines screamed "MASSIVE TERRORIST ATTACKS ACROSS INDIA FOILED; NUCLEAR ARMS SAFE."

"We had to go save two foreigners, right?"

"You mean, the ones with the blonde hair and the…blue hair?" Prasad never really understood how that was possible. Blonde hair on the other hand…mmm.

Iyer ignored her inner musings and continued on. "Those two, correct. They had an apartment there; I had to make sure that they were who they said they were."

"Uh…okay." Prasad wasn't quite sure where she was going with this. Some police cars zoomed by, nearly hitting some pedestrians but then again, this was India. Stuff like that happened all the time.

"Everything checked out. But if this guy dropped something off there…"

Lt. Iyer kept thinking about it for a second before making up her mind.

"Prasad, get Shetty. We're moving out." She started walking toward the Toyota Qualis that they had driven there. Prasad rolled her eyes and motioned to Shetty, who was chatting with one of the rickshaw drivers. Apparently, they liked her a lot.

"What's up?" she asked.

"We're going."

"Great…"

Iyer honked the horn of the Qualis and motioned quickly for them to get their asses in gear. Prasad and Shetty unhappily jogged over to the SUV and plopped in the back, ready to get over this entire day.

After about thirty minutes of going through traffic jams, checkpoints and the general chaos that had occurred after the terrorist attacks, they arrived at the apartment. They got out of the car and Iyer quickly rushed over to the entrance to the apartment.

"Shouldn't we call for backup?" Prasad asked nervously to Iyer, but she paid no attention. She went into the apartment building that she had remembered going into before, and headed up the stairs, leaving Prasad and Shetty to talk amongst themselves.

"What do you think that's all about?" Shetty asked.

"She thinks that she can take it all by herself," Prasad replied. "Next thing you know, we're going to be fighting Naxalites."  
Shetty glared at her, but it was true. Naxalites were still a big problem in Andhra Pradesh…

"Tamils," Prasad rolled her eyes.

"Hey now," Shetty said, jokingly. "That's the third dig you've taken at them this week, and you told me you'd stop after two."

Prasad sighed, but whatever.

"Did you try the new skin whitening stuff that I sent you last week?" Shetty asked, fiddling with her French braid. She adjusted her beret that she was wearing, having switched her helmet out for it earlier in the day. In the humid air of the Deccan Plateau, wearing all of that armor tired one out pretty quickly. Gone were the M16A4 and the MG4, replaced by modest P226 pistols holstered on their waists. Their armor was not heavy Type III, but a light Type IIA, which could be worn for everyday use.

"Those things never work, you know," Prasad said. It was all one big scam to make more money and to prey on the hopes of Indians who wanted to live up to the fair skinned ideal.

"Nah, my amma said that she got a couple tones lighter," Shetty said, absentmindedly. "I'm sure of it."

"You're amma would believe anything these days," Prasad joked with her. "Remember that murder case in Noida? You know, the one that the CBI completely botched up?"

Shetty didn't know where she was going with this, but decided to go along with it. "Yeah, I remember. It was all over the news and stuff."

"Your amma was completely convinced it was the servant, even though the guy was found murdered a couple of days later."

"She still thinks that," Shetty said back, looking at the chaiwalla across the street. "Wanna get some chai while the LT plays hero?"

"Yeah, sounds good."

There was little traffic today due to the terrorist attacks, but that didn't stop some people from doing business. Prasad and Shetty jogged over from their position and over to the chaiwalla, who grinned when he saw potential business, his stained teeth from the betel he chewed shimmering in the sunlight.

* * *

Ramesh had been pacing back and forth, talking to himself all the while. Sudhir just sat there and stared at him, certifying that he was completely crazy. He noticed that Ramesh had not looked at him for awhile now, so he slowly brought his mobile phone out, and started to text to Mercy to call for help. He had a iPhone, so at least the keypad was silent when he pressed the buttons; he knew the keypad pretty well but he had to keep the keypad out of sight of the crazy man pacing his apartment. After a few harrowing minutes, Sudhir got the text message all typed out; it read, "MeRcy plz send h3lp crvzy guy at mai plice." Good enough. He sent it, and hoped that help would come soon.

Ramesh took another look outside the window and almost had a heart attack. There was a black Toyota Qualis parked across the street, and two of the soldiers he had seen earlier were crossing the street to the apartment! He cocked the pistol just in case, and hoped that they didn't come over to investigate any further.

The two of them walked to the chaiwalla instead, ordering a cup of tea. Ramesh took a breath out. Just getting some chai, they're just getting some chai, he muttered to himself. He hoped that it would stay that way.

* * *

"I heard that Col. Krishnan might get a really high award," Prasad said idly, taking a sip of the spice-laden brown stuff. "Like the Vir Chakra."

"Typical. We do all the fighting and they get all the awards," Shetty scoffed. "Boss, you call this chai?" she bitched at the chaiwalla. "There's too much cardamom in the tea, and you didn't brew it long enough."

"Sorry auntie," he chirped back. "No extra cost." He started to brew another batch of tea, adding just the right amount of tea leaves and less on the cardamom this time around.

"Fine."

"Auntie?" Prasad giggled. "You must be getting old."  
"Ha ha," Shetty groaned. "Jokes at my expense."

"Hey!"

Prasad and Shetty looked over to see Lt. Iyer, not happy with them standing and drinking chai.

"What are you two doing?!"

"Just having some chai," Prasad shouted back. "You seemed to have everything under control."

Iyer opened her mouth to say something back, but knew that Prasad was right. In her haste, she hadn't asked for the two of them to come with her or to call for backup. So they did what any reasonable soldier would do without orders; take a nice break. And the worse part of it all is that she hadn't found anything. The apartment was bare, completely cleaned out and no evidence of it ever been occupied before.

"I'm calling it into HQ," she yelled over to them, reaching for the radio in the SUV. "Get me some as well."

The chaiwalla heard that and immediately got a glass ready. He sure was in luck today.

Iyer hit the transmit button on the radio to get into contact with Col. Krishnan.

"Devi 1, to Devi Actual, come in, over."

After a moment of static, Krishnan replied.

"This is Devi Actual, go ahead."

"Followed up on the lead from the auto drivers. Nothing so far. We'll continue searching the area, out."

"Affirmative," Krishnan said, wondering if they were getting chai. She made a mental note to admonish the unit for taking too many chai breaks. Then again, they had performed well last night, so they certainly earned an extra chai break here and there.

"Devi 1, out."

Iyer put down the radio and closed the door when she noticed two cars coming down the road at high speed.

* * *

"And it smelled kind of weird…" Prasad began to say, before being interrupted by the squeal of tires.

Two white Maruti Suzukis screeched to the front of the apartment complex, bringing Shetty and Prasad out of their inane conversation. A serious looking woman, dressed sharply in a suit and slacks, hopped out of the passenger's seat and looked at them. Two other CBI agents also got out of the other car, dressed in suits as well.

"Who's in charge here?!" she asked Prasad.

Prasad just looked at her. What she said was complete gibberish to her ears.

The woman sighed, and pulled out a badge and ID card. It read, "Mercy Abraham, CBI Special Agent."

"Ah." Prasad couldn't read that either, but she figured that she wanted to find the person in charge. She pointed to Lt. Iyer who had just crossed the road.

"You there!" Mercy said, gesturing to her to come over.

"Who are…oh, I see." It was rare to see Lt. Iyer to be caught off guard, but this one incident did. "What do you want?" Iyer asked, somewhat flustered.

"Have you noticed any suspicious activity around here?" Mercy asked forcefully.

"No, I have not," Iyer replied sternly back, in English.

"What are you doing here then?" Mercy asked, even more forcefully this time. "There's a hostage situation in one of these apartments here and you're just standing around?!"

"I checked one of the apartments." Iyer pointed to the one across the street. "I visited it on a suspicion that terrorists might be hiding out there."

"Well, they're hiding out in that one!" Mercy pointed to the top floor. "Come on!" She pulled out a P226 from a holster and motioned for the others to follow her.

The lock to the entrance of the apartment complete was soundly defeated by one of the CBI agents smashing lock with his foot, and breaking the door open.

"Which floor?" Iyer asked her.

"It's on the fifth floor," Mercy replied. "502."

She took the lead, with the CBI agents following her, and the 108th Defence Force troopers trudging up behind them.

"She's excited," Prasad said to Shetty, who was panting a little bit as they got up the stairs.

"Tell…me…about…it," Shetty replied, gasping for some more air.

They made it to the fifth floor, regretting that cup of chai as they did so. Mercy and the CBI agents were already stacked up by the door, and the rest of the team rushed to join them.

"Okay, here's the plan," Mercy said to them as they took up positions. "There's a big living room as soon as we go in. The kitchen is on the left, and the bedroom on the right. You three," she pointed to Prasad, Shetty and Iyer. "Take the kitchen." Iyer translated that statement for the other two who didn't speak English.

"I thought I took this job so I wouldn't have to spend time in the kitchen," Shetty complained, quietly. Iyer and Prasad just glared at her.

Mercy continued on. "We're going to take the bedroom. Understand?"

"Yes," Iyer replied. She translated that part too for them. Prasad and Shetty both nodded, and checked their pistols.

"Alright." Mercy kept close to the door. "On three."

"One."

* * *

Ramash had seen the cars pull up. The woman who got out of the car started berating the people at the chaiwalla stand before rushing into the apartment complex.

"Shit!" he said to himself. There was no way he was getting out of this situation by shooting his way out. He looked at Sudhir, who was still huddling in the corner.

"Get up," he said to him. Sudhir complied, and Ramesh shoved him in front of him.

"What's going on?" he asked real nervously.

"Do what I say, and you don't get hurt, understand?"

"Yeah, I get it," Sudhir replied, somewhat mockingly.

"Don't mock me, bourgeois," Ramesh hissed back, cocking his Makarov pistol next to Sudhir's head.

"Okay, okay." Sudhir was a little less mocking on that statement.

"Two."

Ramesh did not position himself in front of the door, where he could be easily surrounded and cut down. Instead, he shifted over to the left, keeping a wall to his back and Sudhir to his front, grabbing hold of him by the collar. This way, whoever was entering the apartment could only engage him from one direction, and he could slowly make his way to the exit instead of having to plow through a bunch of hostiles to get out of the building.

"Three."

* * *

One of the CBI agents kicked down the door, only to have a couple of rounds go over his head. But the momentum was carrying the rest of them forward, and so they charged forward anyway. Ramesh held his fire now; his main goal was to get out of there, and killing more police was not conductive to that goal. Mercy and the CBI agents trained their weapons on him, and Mercy started shouting things at him to get Ramesh to surrender. Shetty, Prasad and Iyer ignored them and continued into the kitchen, making sure that it was secure before turning their attention onto the hostage situation.

"Hey, let that man go!" Mercy shouted at Ramesh, in English. "Put the gun down!"

"Not in a million years, you capitalist pig!" Ramesh replied, in Punjabi. The amount of languages being spoken would have given any sane person a headache, but then again, this was India. He waved the pistol around threateningly, making sure to keep behind Sudhir. Sudhir was actually pretty calm, considering the situation. But he was certainly surprised to see Mercy holding a pistol and pointing it at him (well, at Ramesh, but still).

"I'm going to give you thirty seconds to let that man go," Mercy said, making sure that the hostage taker did not know she had a personal connection.

"I'm not going anywhere until I get a ride out of here and to a destination of my choosing," Ramesh shot back. He knew that wasn't going to happen, but he was just stalling for time.

"Twenty seconds," Mercy replied, stoically. She kept the sights on Ramesh's head.

"That accent…" Ramesh scoffed. "How could you betray your comrades at arms?"

"Ten seconds."

"You Keralites are so soft. You wouldn't know Communism if it stared you in the face," Ramesh taunted. He knew that he was running out of time, and slowly inched his way toward the door, with six guns still trained on him.

"Five."

"Go to hell."

"Four.

Ramesh still continued to advance, slowly.

"Three."

The door was in his reach, he could make it! From a single cell, he would rebuild the revolution. He was already thinking of the vengeance he would bring upon the elites and to those who sold them out for a couple of paisa to the west.

He was planning ten moves ahead, but forgot that those moves are dependent on the first one. In his excitement, he forgot about the doorway that led to Sudhir's small bedroom. As soon as he started to pass the door, Sudhir suddenly jerked away from Ramesh, tearing away from his grasp and ducked into the room.

Ramesh was left there, awkwardly, pistol unraised and with a completely blank expression on his face. In a split second he knew that his revolution was over.

Six guns spat out death, twelve rounds each, riddling his body with 9mm bullets as he crashed to the floor.

"Long live the revolution," he sputtered, and died. The CBI agents rushed forward and kicked the weapon from his hands, making sure that he was alright. Sudhir popped back from out of the room and looked at Mercy.

"How…what…err…" He was obviously at a loss for words.

Mercy just nodded at him before speaking. "I'm with the CBI, if you haven't already noticed."

"But…how…?" Sudhir was still looking for those words.

"Let me explain," Mercy continued. "I went undercover with the CBI to discover what Nakanishi was up to. During the course of my investigation, we took notice of your email to that Representative, and started to dig further. Turns out, Nakanishi was a much bigger threat than we had ever envisioned. Those threats were backed up by concrete evidence we received from the Japanese Government concerning a massive operation to secure Nakanishi's place on the world scene. Thanks to these guys," she pointed at Prasad, Shetty, and Iyer, "Those attacks were defeated."

"So…all those times…?" Sudhir asked Mercy. "We just…I…?"

"We can talk later, if you wish," Mercy said with a slight smile. "In the meantime, let's get you out of here and we can take your statement." She held out her hand, and Sudhir took it, stepping gingerly over the body of the very dead Ramesh.

"Why did you have to shoot him so much?" Sudhir asked.

Mercy shrugged. "That's all the bullets we had."

Lt. Iyer looked confused by that statement. She checked her tactical belt; there were still two more full magazines there. Prasad and Shetty just shrugged, and headed back downstairs to get another cup of chai from the vendor outside.


	51. Chapter XLIX: Queen takes King

**Chapter XLIX: Queen takes King**

**0700hrs, 17 December 2013, Tsukuba, near Mt. Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan**

_"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality." Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations._

* * *

The mansion on the hill near the suburb of Miyawaki glistened in the rising sunlight as the SAILOR team pulled up outside the driveway.

"That's a massive house," Raye said, gazing out of the window.

"Stop saying that," Lita replied.

"I was just taking stock of its size…"

"Enough you two," SAILOR Moon interrupted. "Luna, Artemis, give me a sitrep."

"Luna found something in the data traffic from those Nakanishi servers," Artemis said, gazing at his computer and eating some cheese puffs. "It looks like Beryl is making her move on Yamada." He focused the satellite image on their location. "Check out the house and eliminate any threats, including Beryl and head management, over."

"Understood."

"I don't think you'll be needing those Tasers anymore," Raye smirked at Lita, putting some more rounds in her Beta C-Mag and loading it into her G36K.

"I'll take them, thank you very much," Lita said, priding on herself on not killing anyone during her part on the assault on the Nakanishi HQ. "I have my rifle here anyway."

Raye shrugged. "Your choice." She opened the door of the car. "Let's move."

The team got out and headed casually toward the front gates of the house.

"Movement," Artemis said into their radios. "Looks like some PMC goons."

Their HUDs lit up with several red dots, indicating the hostile targets.

"I see them," SAILOR Moon replied. "SAILOR Jupiter, take the back. SAILOR Mars and I will take the front."

"Got it." Lita moved toward the right side of the house, following a driveway that led to a five car garage, and past that, to the backyard. There, she held up against a low wall, out of sight. Two guards patrolled the garage and the entrance to the backyard, an obvious weak point in the security compared to the front of the building.

"I have two contacts," she reported, lifting her HK416 to the firing position. They were not paying attention, and would make easy prey.

"Hold up," SAILOR Moon whispered. She was looking through the gate, tracking the guards and their movements.

"I'm ready to take these guys down," Lita said impatiently.

"Just a couple more seconds…" Serena saw a gap in the defenses, with two guards facing away from each other. "Go."

Raye quietly opened up the entrance gate and advanced forward. Serena was right behind her, gun up and ready to shoot when they got in nice and close.

The layout of the house was this. A large two story, modernist house with big windows and a porch on the second floor made it visible for a good distance around. It overlooked the rest of Tokyo, and the sunrise from the house, amplified by the windows was a sight to behold. There was a large garden in the front, complete with a tea garden, a koi pool, some shrubbery and stone benches, some trees here and there, and a fully automated sprinkler system with environmentally sensitive software that would conserve water when necessary. A rock path lead to the front door, which was reinforced with steel while maintaining a veneer of a normal, western style wooden door. The two guards were on the balcony and by the front door, respectively, but their patrol patterns left a small gap that Serena and Raye could use in order to surprise the guards.

Raye and Serena kept moving at a fast clip, with Serena keeping track of the two guards who were just about to turn around on their patrol route.

"Three seconds," Serena muttered. She kept counting down. "Two…one."

"Engage!"

The guards turned around and immediately saw two people that weren't supposed to be there. They had orders to shoot to kill, and complied by raising their Minebea PM-9 machine pistols to pepper their lines of fire.

SAILOR Moon and Mars were faster though. A couple of very loud shots from their rifles later, the two guards were killed, messy red holes bleeding through their white shirts and staining their sport coats.

Lita engaged the two guards, firing two shots at the guard near the garage, and then a burst at the man on the roof of the garage. They went down.

Mars placed an explosive charge on the door, nodded to Serena, and detonated the charge. The door was blown in, and Raye was in before anyone had a chance to react. A guard opened up with his PM-9, spraying the entrance. He would have gotten them if SAILOR Moon or Mars hadn't had gotten through the door quickly, and he went down as Mars fired a couple of bursts from her G36.

Lita had just come through the back after killing two more guards that had rushed down from upstairs to contain the threat from Raye and Serena. She moved up some stairs to the second floor, but there didn't seem to be anyone else left.

"Clear!" she yelled down to Raye and Serena. Strange. There should be more guards here.

Lita continued to move down a hall, with two doors on her left, a door on her right, and a common area with the stairwell down to the first floor. She tried the first door on her left. Open.

Lita slung her HK416 at her side and brought up her ballistic shield, with her Glock 26 at the ready. This was probably one of the few times that holding a gun "gangster" style was appropriate; the limited view from the slot in the top of the shield forced the user to hold the gun sideways if they wanted to use the sights on the weapon. She kicked the door open.

Nothing. It was just a guest room. Two western style beds were on the right side of the room, with a small closet on the left. A glass door led to the balcony. Just to make sure, Lita opened up the closet. Again, there was nothing.

"Lita, how's it coming up there?" Serena asked over her radio. They were clearing out the first floor, and Raye had just found a door to a basement. The kitchen looked especially nice; there were high tech appliances for everything. Serena resisted the urge to check in the refrigerator for some food; she was feeling a little bit peckish right now, and especially after that raid on the Nakanishi HQ.

"It's going good. There's not too many rooms to clear out."

"We just found a basement, and we're clearing it out."

"Okay, I'll assist when you're finished."

"Got it."

Lita continued to the second door. Same story as the first one.

She then turned her attention to the final door on the right. This room seemed to bigger than the other two, considering that they took up the same amount of space on each side.

"This must be Yamada's room," SAILOR Jupiter said to herself. She readied herself, her shield on her left arm, and her pistol at the ready on the right. Again, before entering a room, one should make sure that it's open. This time though, it was locked. Not a problem for most CQB specialists, but Lita simply snapped the handle off and pushed the entire locking unit out into the room, making a loud "clank!" as it hit the floor. It was kind of pathetic, really. Someone with much money should be able to afford better locks than this. Lita kicked open the door and advanced forward, keeping the shield and her body armor facing toward the center of the room to prevent anybody shooting her.

There was no need for that though. Lita slung the shield back over her back and looked at the scene in front of her.

Yamada was deader than dead, his face completely pale and a while foam around his mouth. He was eagle spread on his the extremely large bed in the center of the room, almost buried beneath the multitude of pillows and heavy blankets that adored it.

Lita took a quick look around the room, just to make sure there were no surprises waiting for her. The room was decorated with tacky post-modern art, including a blank canvas (Lita could never understand how that consisted of art), a large Plasma TV on the wall in front of the bed, a coffee table, a loveseat and a small couch, some bookshelves that had a gigantic collection of pornography of all types, and a walk in closet on the right side of the room. Large French doors led out to the balcony, but the windows were covered up by blinds, letting in only a few rays of light. Lita hit the light switch and made sure that everything was secure.

"Guys, you might want to come up here and get a look at this," she said over the radio.

"What is it?" Serena asked. There was nothing spectacular about the basement, although Raye did find a yoga wall, complete with straps and hooks.

"It's Yamada."

"He's dead, isn't he?" The tone in Lita's voice gave it away.

"Very dead."

"We're coming up then, standby." Serena motioned to Raye, and they clomped back up the stairs to where Lita was waiting in Yamada's room.

"Jesus," Raye said, inadvertently. Serena didn't catch what she muttered to herself, but she continued to stare at Yamada's dead body.

"Wow, you weren't kidding on this one," Serena said to Lita. "What the hell happened, do you think?"

"Someone must have slipped him some bad coke," she replied, pointing to several lines on the coffee table. A rolled up 1000 yen note lay nearby, along with several shot glasses.

"Beryl?" Raye asked. She poked at one of lines of coke before Serena knocked her hand away.

"More than likely," Lita replied, stifling a chuckle at those two. "She's trying to clean house."

"Why have the guards here then?" Raye asked.

"Probably to keep the situation under control until they figure out how to explain all of this to everyone," Serena guessed. She took another look around the room, trying to make sense of it all.

"I'm going to ask Artemis about this," she said to the other two.

Artemis and Luna were in the conference room, coordinating the operation from there. The local security team had complete control of the Medical Facility, and the doctors and medical staff were supportive and cooperative with their recent coup. Artemis poked at the computer screen some more, wondering how all of this was going to play out when Serena's voice sounded over the radio.

"Yeah, Artemis, go ahead."

"We just found Yamada," she said.

"What's his status?"

"He's dead."

Artemis rolled his eyes at that. It wasn't all that unexpected that Beryl would make a move like that. "Okay, give me a video feed and I'll get Luna in here." He covered the mouthpiece on the headset he was talking on and shouted.

"Hey Luna! We got Yamada!" Luna was taking a restroom break and quickly ran back into the conference room.

"Is he…?"

"He's dead."

Luna sighed; that made things both simple and complicated at the same time. The live video feed from Serena's HUD confirmed it.

"SAILOR Team, hold position and await further orders," Luna said, taking a look at the communications traffic.

Artemis looked at the satellite feed showing the house, and suddenly noticed several vehicles approaching at high speed toward it.

"What the…" he continued to watch as the vehicles drove full tilt toward Yamada's house, until they stopped about two-hundred meters away, and proceeded more slowly until they were fifty meters away. It hit him all of a sudden.

"SAILOR Moon, get out of there, multiple Nakanishi PMC units converging on your position, over," Artemis said frantically, looking at the satellite feed.

It suddenly cut out. Artemis blinked, wonder what the hell happened. "Uh, SAILOR Team, standby, we have some technical faults here…"

"Uh, how can we standby if you just asked us to leave?" SAILOR Moon asked him.

"Artemis!" Luna screamed at him from across the table. He looked up quickly, not expecting that.

"What?!"

"They're after us too!" Luna had just checked the flow of data coming in and out of Medical facility and everything had stopped. Nothing was getting in or out, and that could mean only one thing; they were about to be attacked by the PMC. She tried the phone lines; nothing.

"I thought they were after Yamada's place?!"

"No, they just got an order from Beryl to clear this Medical facility out!" That was sheer guesswork, but it was the only logical option that she could think of at this point.

"Shit, Beryl is covering her tracks." Artemis started to clear up his workspace, but stopped himself on the absurdity of that move. "Where are we going?"

"The Americans know of us, we're going to Yokota Air Force Base…" Luna said slowly, realizing that was a foolhardy move; major attacks were planned for Yokota, and trying to explain themselves to base security was going to be next to impossible. But driving six hours away…where could they go? Nakanishi had contracts with all of the JSDF bases, and even the American ones as well. The SAILOR team could handle PMC goons, but the rest of the support staff…they would be dead in seconds.

"But that's over six hours away!" He quickly racked his brain for options. "And Misawa Air Base is just as far from here."

"Well, we can't stay and fight. Those PMC goons will overwhelm us."

Artemis remembered the time that Amy and Mina were trapped, and had asked for help from another party…a paramilitary unit…?

"Can you get in contact with any 1st Airborne units?" he asked Luna.

"What…?"

"There's a whole garrison of units near here at Matsushima Air Field, on exercises from their base at Chiba."

Luna took in a deep breath. Involving more people and more units from around the nation would certainly attract more attention…but they needed all the help they could get. And plus, if they were discovered, so what? They weren't working for Nakanishi any more…it was time to break off the shackles of that infernal corporation. And plus, that would get all the other JSDF units on alert, something that she had been failing at for the last couple of hours, despite all the information she had on hand about the terrorist attacks.

"Okay, I'll call the 1st Airborne…hopefully, we can get them here and get us out of this situation. I'll just tell them that we're part of the Special Forces Group and that we need their assistance."

Artemis wondered if he should do that, since there weren't too many women with the Special Forces Group, but he needed to get the SAILOR Team out of the area they were operating in at the moment.

"Okay, listen up, our facility has been compromised. We're going dark at the moment and you're on your own for now."

"Where should we go?" Serena asked.

"I don't know," was Artemis' reply. "I don't know. Things are getting out of hand here, and I say just head for the nearest US military base…uh…that would be Yokota, in Fussa."

"But that's over two hours away!"

"I'm sorry, but we cannot provide assistance. Artemis out." He didn't know where else to send them. He just hoped that the police did their job and stopped most of the terrorist attacks before they started, and that Serena, Raye and Lita would be able to survive on their own.

The transmission was ended abruptly.

"Shit," Serena said. "Guys, we gotta move!"

* * *

"Priority Message from 3 Alpha 6, request immediate assistance at this location," Luna said over the radio. At least they still had that, but for how long was anyone's guess. It probably helped that they had that secure network that had been set up for Amy's and Mina's excursion to Hong Kong. After a couple of minutes arguing with the communications officer, the commander of the 1st Airborne Brigade came on the horn, quite irritated at this development.

"Identify yourself," the voice of the 1st Airborne Brigade commander gruffly said.

"This is Third Platoon, 1st Company, of the Special Forces Group, we're under attack by an unknown force. We are currently holed up in an office complex at this location."

Luna gave the GPS coordinates, a long string of numbers that would help in locating their facility, which technically didn't exist on the map.

"Uh, I've never heard of this facility here, break," the commander replied. "And I certainly don't know of any special operations force up in this area. And why are you under attack? Over." This was true, since many of the Special Forces Group were drawn from the 1st Airborne Brigade.  
"How the fuck should I know?" Luna replied, impatiently. "I'm just the comm officer!"

That answered the 1st Airborne commander's next question, why the hell was there a woman with the special operation force? A lot of things weren't making sense or adding up, but they were nearby at least, and if nothing else, this could be a good training opportunity. They had been getting some weird reports about a massive wave of terrorist attacks occurring in the next eight hours or so, and while intelligence didn't have much to say about it, this might be related to those reports they kept getting.

"Okay, I'm mobilizing my force now, ETA to your location…sixty minutes, over."

"Thank you. Out."

Luna put down the radio and looked at Artemis.

"Well, we've got our work cut out for us then."

"What are we going to do now?" Artemis asked.

"We're going to have to hold out for sixty minutes, that's what."

"I haven't held a gun since basic," Artemis muttered. "I don't think…"

"We don't have much of a choice." Luna thought of the two men that were locked up in the sterile, white rooms downstairs. "I can at least buy some time then. Follow me." She got up from her chair and exited the conference room, followed by Artemis.

Luna and Artemis walked down to the isolation wing that the SAILOR Team had found themselves six months ago, flanked by armed security guards, their PM-9 submachine guns ready. Luna went into one of the observation rooms and tapped the person monitoring the screens.

"Nurse Kuroi," Luna said. "Need to get into Room 1B."

"They've been a bit antsy as of late," Kuroi-sensei told her. "What do you want with them?"

"To give them one last chance."

Kuroi simply nodded and unlocked 1B.

Luna told the security guards to wait outside as she went inside the room. Two men were in there; one was lying on the bed, the other one was pacing about, muttering to himself.

"Akamatsu. Colonel Iwasaki."

Luna's voice brought them back to reality.

"Morning," Akamatsu grumbled irritably. "Here to gloat some more?"

"No, I'm here to ask for your help."

Iwasaki scoffed at that. "First, you mutiny against your superiors…take over this facility, and now you want your help?"

Luna sighed; she knew that this was going to be a problem. "Look," she said. "Nakanishi is cleaning house. We've got everything on them, and they're trying to cover their tracks by getting rid of us."

"Just get to the dammed point," Akamatsu replied, sitting up from the bed.

"Right now, the Nakanishi PMC is headed this way to sanitize this facility."

"By Sanitize, you mean, kill all of us," Iwasaki said back.

"Exactly."

"And why should we help you?" Akamatsu retorted. "You haven't been the best hosts after all."

"It doesn't matter if you aren't with us," Luna replied. "They'll kill you all the same. So the way you die comes down to this; you die fighting, or you die in this cell without any means of defending yourself."

"Is there any help coming from outside?" Akamatsu asked after a moment of hesitation.

"Akamatsu…" Iwasaki hissed.

"Yes," Luna said, sensing Akamatsu's reluctance to die in a small cell. "The 1st Airborne Brigade is on its way, but they won't be here for another hour or so."

Akamatsu weighed his options for a second, but it didn't take long for the former soldier to side with Luna. "Yeah, I'll fight them."

"Akamatsu!" Iwasaki shouted. "You can't do this!"

"I am doing this," he spat back. "I'd rather die a man than to be executed like a common criminal."

He started for the door; Luna let him pass. She knew that he could find his way to the armory just fine.

"How about you?" she asked.

"What about me?" Iwasaki responded, tossing the question aside with his own.

"I guess you prefer to stay here then."

"Yeah, I guess I do."

Luna shrugged. "Your choice then." She left the room, closing the door behind her and letting Iwasaki fume in silence.

* * *

"We gotta move!"

Serena, Lita and Raye ran outside, only to find that several minivans had pulled up outside.

"Oh fuck," Raye hissed. "Our car is outside there!"

"The garage!" Lita pointed out. The three of them quickly moved to the garage, hoping that there was something of use in there.

Lita opened up the door after busting out the lock…and was dumbstruck at what she found. She hadn't really paid much attention to this part, only making sure that there were no bad guys when she passed through earlier.

The garage was a multi-story lot, but instead of having all of the cars parked on one floor, there was an automated system that would store the cars underground, and would bring them up via sled. The user would select which car they wanted, and in thirty seconds, the car of their choice would be hefted up to them on a sled, ready to go. The keys would be deposited/released via a slot by the computer, simplifying the process considerably.

There were no cars on the floor at the moment, and so they needed to select a vehicle to get out of there. Lita went over to the computer, a stand-alone terminal with a box nearby it for the keys. The menu was open, and she looked at the variety of cars there.

"What kind should I pick…?" she muttered to herself.

"Hurry and pick one," Serena urged. "I think they're getting closer."

"I'm trying…" Lita saw ten different cars, but figured anything else was better than taking a stupid Kei-car out into a gunfight. She picked the most exotic naming one on the list…she didn't recognize the name at all.

The garage whirred and hummed as it selected the car, moving the metal sled onto an elevator, which would take the car up to the garage floor.

The three of them turned to face the car that Lita had selected…and nearly fainted at the sight in front of them.

A black and orange Bugatti Veryon Super Sport sat in front of them. It looked like something out of a scifi film; sleek curvatures of the body, perfectly engineered to slice through the air at maximum speed. Three million dollars' worth of automotive bliss, designed to be as good as a car could get. The tires alone cost more than the average car in Japan, let alone the salary that some people made in a year. Zero to a hundred in 2.5 seconds. 1200 horsepower. A top speed of 431 kilometers per hour. And it was one of thirty produced.

"Lita, I think you've done good," Raye said. A loud noise from outside, most likely flashbangs, sent them back to reality.

"Raye…?" Serena asked, handing her the keys from the box next to the computer.

"Hell yes." Raye took the keys and opened up the driver's side door…which she found to be the passenger's side.

"Dammit." People were such idiots for driving on the wrong side of the road in other countries. Oh well.

There was also another problem with the car; it only had two seats. That meant…

"Sorry Serena," Lita said, squeezing in next to Serena in the seat. She put her shield on the floor, along with her HK416; maneuvering it around was going to be a challenge in this car. There was enough room in the seat, but with fatass Serena in it, the large seat was quickly taken up by her bum.

"Oh, don't mind me," she replied back, somewhat annoyed. Serena was also in a position where she couldn't shoot out of the car unless she wanted to seriously deafen Lita or Raye. The only way she could fire out was through the windshield, and the flying brass would be more than a distraction to Lita.

Raye first inserted the special key by the driver's door that caused the entire car to sink close to the ground, as to gain its maximum aerodynamic properties. She then hit the ignition button, and the beautiful sound of the 8.0 liter engine powering up filled the garage. From the internal database on her HUD, Raye was fed information about how to use the car, from the floppy paddle…er, semi-automatic gearbox, the rate of acceleration, corrections for a car driving on the right side for the left, and so on and so forth.

"Everyone in?" Serena asked, even though that answer was obvious.

"Uh huh," Lita said. "Raye, pass me your rifle, please."

Raye did so, and Lita rolled down the window, sticking the rifle out of it. They would certainly be able to outrun their pursuers…but they had to get through them first. That part was certainly not guaranteed.

"Get ready," Raye said. She breathed in and out, taking stock of the situation.

"Punch that shit," Serena ordered after a moment.

"Done." Raye hit the garage door opener, and all hell broke loose.


	52. Chapter L: Pawn takes Rook

**Chapter L: Pawn takes Rook**

**0800hrs, 17 December 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house." David Summer, Straw Dogs._

* * *

Luna walked quickly to where Dr. Koyabashi and Kawasaki were located, in the basement where most of the medical staff had congregated. Behind her, the two security officers from before and Artemis rolled a couple of carts worth of ammo and weapons leaving her and taking the elevator down to the basement. In all, there were about thirty or so medical personnel on duty at the time the PMC decided to attack. Most of the rest of them were home on holiday, and the other divisions of the SAILOR program (finance, transportation, etc) were located around the country. However, this very spot was the focus of the SAILOR team, where they rested, got medical treatment (obviously), and the brains and know-how about them resided in this very place. So, it was do or die time now, and it looked like they were going to have more the dying part. Luna's shoes clacked down the stairs while the elevator's bell sounded in the hallway where a short couple of months ago, Serena and company had dashed through, eager to eat their meals together.

Artemis and the security guards were already there, with Kobayashi and the rest of the medical personnel.

"How bad is it?" Kobayashi asked her.

"Very bad. We're about to be attacked by the PMC, and they have the only route out of here blocked off."

"What can we do? Can we fight?" That was against everything that had been taught to Kobayashi; First Do No harm. But how much harm had he done in the last couple of months, treating the girls, sending them out on missions, and using them as glorified attack dogs? But it had been decided earlier by vote that they should defend themselves. There was no other choice.

"If you want to," Luna said. "I'd prefer if you'd let the security force and I take care of the threats outside of the building, but if they get in…" She handed him a P220 pistol from the cart, and the rest of the medical staff lined up to receive their weapons.

"We can take it from here," one of the security guards told Luna. She nodded, and motioned to Artemis to follow her out.

"If anything else," she muttered to him as they walked away. "They can take the quick way out."

Artemis gulped when he heard that. He hoped that it didn't come down to that situation.

* * *

Luna and Artemis took up positions on the second floor of the Medical Facility, in a small office overlooking the entrance to the base. She held a Steyr AUG, a bullpup rifle equipped with a 3x scope on a rail sight. Artemis was carrying a P90, again, a bullpup PDW with the 5.7mm round, designed to penetrate body armor but small enough for use in cramped quarters. He fidgeted with the plastic-esque weapon; it didn't even feel like a "real" gun, with metal and wood furniture.

"Stop doing that," Luna admonished him.

"Sorry," he replied. But he just couldn't get a good feel for the weapon; he had cross-trained on weapons like these, and which allowed for both Luna and Artemis to use these weapons but again, it just didn't stick with him. And all the Howa rifles had been taken by the security force.

"You'll be fine," Luna said, after watching him fidget after awhile. She reached for the radio on her right shoulder. "This is Luna. Akamatsu, you in position?"

Akamatsu found himself a good line of fire on the top of the roof. "Yeah, I'm here," was the response.

"Keep a lookout for those vehicles. When you have a shot, take it. No theatrics here."

"Roger."

He was armed with a M24 sniper rifle, capable of reaching targets 800 meters out. The facility proper was located on the side of a mountain, hidden from view by foliage and if necessary, camouflage as well. There was a paved road leading from the nearby highway, and luckily for them, that was the route the PMC had to take to get to the medical facility. Unfortunately, from what Akamatsu counted, there were at least twenty to thirty Toyota Land Cruiser Prados snaking their way up the road to the facility. How they got so many personnel for that PMC, Akamatsu did not know...well, he actually did know. Even with all the work the JSDF did for Japan, it was still seen on the bottom rung of places to work, even if it was for the government. Government jobs were usually prized, but the JSDF was a reminder of the more militant days of Japan and as a consequence, people didn't really much care to be reminded of that again. Once people got out of the JSDF, they had a hard time finding jobs and such, making them easy pickings for a PMC. The promise of a huge pay increase, doing a familiar job, and benefits was more than enough to get people to sign the dotted line (or rather, stamp their family seals).

He readied his rifle, even though they were still a considerable amount of distance off.

"That's a lot of vehicles," Luna muttered. They could see the situation just as well as Akamatsu did, and it was not pretty.

"Did the security people plant those claymores along the road?" Artemis asked.

A loud boom echoed in the distance, answering his question. The lead SUV was rocked by several explosions; the claymore was meant to be an anti-personnel mine but the sheer amount of projectiles that it released when detonated, some 700 ball bearings per mine meant that it could be used against lightly armored vehicles as well. The lead vehicle was shattered by thousands of ball bearings, ensuring that no one inside survived.

"That's all the mines we have though," Luna muttered.

The next SUV simply drove around the now smoking and disabled vehicle and continued forward, unfazed. They drove faster now, seeing that they that could come under fire at any time now. Clearly, they weren't expecting much resistance but the claymore ambush set them on edge.

"Luna," the commander of the security forces said to her over the radio, "We're all ready here. As much as we'll ever be though."

"Understood," Luna replied. The most amount of contact that Luna, Artemis, or any of the SAILOR team had with the security people was when they occasionally did patrols of the facility, or had their IDs checked at the main gate. The commander of the security forces was a bald man in his fifties, ex-Tokyo Metropolitan officer with several anti-Yakuza operations under his belt. But in a down and out slug-fest with a large attacking force was something that they hadn't trained for at all. There were about thirty or so security people, armed with a variety of Howa Type 64 and 89 rifles, M16s, Steyr AUGs, P90s and whatever else they could get out of the armory at the moment. But they were still outnumbered by four or five to one, as indicated by the amount of SUVs coming up the hillside. At least they were well stocked with plenty of ammunition, but that was it. Most of the heavy weaponry had been sent back to JSDF facilities after training had finished with the SAILOR team, along with the explosives. It didn't make much sense to keep all that weaponry at the facility when it could be easily accessed at any JSDF base that the SAILOR team flew out of when they deployed on missions or could acquire on site.

Akamatsu saw that they were entering his effective range, and sighted in on one of the SUVs traversing up the road. He fired, but missed, the bullet skipping into the snow on the hillside.

"Damn." He retracted the bolt and chambered a new round. He took his time on this one, letting the crosshairs drift naturally toward the driver in the lead vehicle.

Akamatsu breathed in, steadied, and fired. The round flew straight and true…and did jack squat. The windshield was bullet resistant, of course. He did see the driver flinch though.

"Luna, I can't do shit here," he said over his radio, chambering another round.

"Go for the tires!"

Thanks, I was about to try for that, Akamatsu thought. He fired another round, popping the left front tire on the lead vehicle. It rolled to a stop, but the occupants stayed inside, afraid to draw more fire. Behind them, the SUVs were trying to speed up, wary of more ambushes and traps, but the road was somewhat slick making it very difficult to approach. Several of the vehicles stopped and pulled to the side, infantry dismounting from them. The SUVs continued forward, trying to draw fire so that the infantry could have time to get into position.

"I have enemy infantry dismounting five hundred meters from the entrance. They might try for a flanking maneuver, over."

"We see them," Luna replied, bringing her AUG to bear. Five hundred meters was a pretty tough distance to hit something from though... "All units, hold fire."

"Roger."

The infantry continued to advance forward, but it was apparent that they were not prepared at all for the environment they were fighting in. Many of them wore black fatigues, contrasting sharply with the snow on the ground, and they struggled to get through the snow that lay on the ground. Even a little bit of snow completely changed the game, with the water concentration soaking boots, sapping morale, and being tough to maneuver through (especially if an unit was not trained for winter warfare), and overall, being a complete pain.

"They're at four hundred meters," Akamatsu said. He saw some officers getting their men into position. Five squads of about nine soldiers apiece advanced through the snow, up the hill and toward the medical facility. A couple of platoons worth of soldiers still making their way up the mountain in the SUVs, so they had time to throw these guys back…if they survived at all.

"At three hundred meters, commence firing for all units. Akamatsu, take down their officers and try to disrupt their unit cohesion."

"Roger." Akamatsu laid into them, firing round after round at the leadership, taking down two men he supposed to be officers or NCOs, and causing the rest to go to ground. A couple of them fired errantly, but it was more of a gesture of defiance than actual shots meant to kill.

He jacked another round into the chamber and lined up the crosshairs on a squad leader, trying to move his men forward. The guy looked to be about his age, probably had served in the JSDF, maybe had a family and kids and was definitely well motivated. He probably took this job to put his kids into cram school, or maybe save up for their college education…hell, maybe he was just doing it to supplement his drinking habit, who knows?

Akamatsu pulled the trigger, sending the 7.62mm bullet into the man's head, right below his helmet. He fell back, dead.

At least the insurance policy would pay for something, Akamatsu darkly thought as he chambered another round.

"They're at three hundred!" Artemis yelled, eyeballing the distance.

"Open fire!" Luna screamed over the radio. She opened up with the AUG, sighting down the scope on an advancing squad. Two men flopped down, dead. The rest of the squad continued to push forward, shooting from the hip.

A couple of rooms down, some security officers opened up with a Type 62 GPMG, but its firing rate was hampered by their inexperience and awkward handling of the weapon. Sometimes they fired too long of a burst, sending all of the rounds flying over the heads of the advancing PMC, or just one round at a time, completely defeating the purpose of a machine gun.

"For crying out loud," Luna spat, listening to the sputtering fire of the machine gunners. She didn't have much training on that particular machine gun, but at least she knew how to fire one, unlike the security officers. Again, most of them were ex-police, either from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police or municipal police departments, with little training in heavy weapons.

"Dammit. Artemis, on me!" Luna and Artemis left the room they were staying in and rushed to the machine gun room.

"Guys, off of the machine gun!" Luna yelled at the two fumbling security guards. They turned around to look at her in disbelief, before several incoming rounds forced them off of the machine gun.

"Thanks," Artemis said. "Go to the second room to the left, and provide additional fire support." Both of the guards nodded and took their Howa Type 89 rifles with them.

Luna was already on the machine gun, taking aim at a mass of soldiers nearing the chain link fence that separated the forest outside from the rest of the facility. She depressed the trigger, sending a short burst through the fence and downing several of them. Artemis appeared by her side, and started to help feed the belt into the gun.

"Hey…hey! By the entrance!" Artemis pointed. Two SUVs had finally made it up the hill and were barreling toward the front gate. Luna adjusted the machine gun and held down the trigger, firing long bursts at the approaching SUVs. Bullets skipped off of the hood, smashed into the windshield, penetrated tires, and killed the engine block on one of them, forcing it to stop.

The men inside got out and hid behind the reinforced doors, firing their Howa Type 89s at them. More fire from the machine gun downed most all of them, and the other SUV backed up, trying to get away. It crashed into a tree, and no one got out of it after that.

But they still kept on coming. One of the PMC soldiers threw a satchel charge and blew a huge hole in the chain link fence, allowing them to cross the parking lot and to take up firing positions by a group of cars.

"Damn." Luna knew she should've yelled at the medical staff to move their cars. She saw Akamatsu's replacement BMW Z4 get riddled with bullets, and knew that he would be extremely pissed off at that fact. Maybe he could write it off as a work expense again.

Up on the roof, Akamatsu saw a squad of soldiers start to cross from the right side of the facility, headed toward the back of it.

"This Akamatsu, flanking maneuver on the right side of the building. I'm engaging."

"Shit," Luna said. They just didn't have the manpower or the skill to engage the flanking maneuver, and without any mobile units or air support it was going to be one man against nine.

"Here it goes," he muttered. The squad was moving in an echelon right formation, with squad leader at the front. He aimed for the last man in the formation, and fired.

There was so much gunfire going on that the report from his rifle was muffled by default. Coupled with the distance from the target, by the time the sound reached the general area that the squad was operating in, the soldier was already on the deck, felled by the lethal bullet.

The other soldiers didn't even notice that one of their own had fallen until Akamatsu fired a second shot, hitting a machine gunner and sent him tumbling down the hillside. Their squad leader wisened up and yelled for them to get a move on. From where Akamatsu was located, he could see them running toward the back entrance of the facility, which led to the basement.

If those guys get in there, the medical personnel won't stand a chance, he thought to himself. Trying to keep calm, he continued to fire, his rounds striking with deadly precision. Another soldier went down, presumably a fire team leader. The grenadier of that fire team took over, only to be felled by another shot from his rifle. Akamatsu then aimed at the squad leader, who was desperately trying to get to cover. Bang.

A round snapped by the leader's head, causing him to find cover. He yelled to the surviving members of the squad to lay down covering fire, and to leapfrog forward toward the entrance of the basement. The remaining machine gunner opened up with his FN Minimi, spitting out 5.56mm rounds at a rate of 800 per minute. Two of the other squad members ran forward, while the squad leader, the machine gunner, and a grenadier provided suppression.

Akamatsu had to duck and move to another part of the roof in order not to get shot, but also to get a better angle on these bastards. He moved about ten meters to his right, reloaded, and popped up again, this time, getting a clear bead on the team leader.

"Not this time," he smirked. The M24 fired, and the team leader's head exploded in a mass of bloody brains and bone. Akamatsu chambered another round and quickly took down the machine gunner. The grenadier, obviously panicking, fired off a grenade from his M203 launcher. The 40mm grenade was not properly aimed, and it detonated a couple of floors down, missing Akamatsu completely. A final shot from Akamatsu brought him down.

Noticing that he had only shot seven soldiers, Akamatsu quickly scanned the area. The other two were not to be seen.

Fuck. That meant they had gotten into the basement. He only hoped that the medical staff were as good at fighting than they were at medical work.

As the two soldiers were about to figure out, putting weapons in the hands of untrained, but very desperate people was going to be very detrimental to their health. As in, leads to their death, type of detriments.

One of them kicked in the door, which had a padlock on it but was shot off as the two soldiers approached.

"This is 2 Charlie 6, we're breaching the facility," he announced into his radio. "Be advised Checkmate Actual, our squad is down, and there's a sniper on the roof inflicting massive casualties."

"Understood 2 Charlie 6," Checkmate Actual replied. "Terminate all medical and security personnel, and secure all intel pertaining to program SAILOR. Out."

2 Charlie 6 pushed open another door, which lead to the hallway not a scant half hour ago, Luna had stood with the medical staff, handing out guns. But it was empty at this time.

"Three. Hey, three," he said to the other soldier. "Take the left, and check out that storage room over that."

"Roger." 3 Charlie 6 advanced, gun up, toward the room that they kept the VR and healing tanks in. He opened the door, and tossed a flashbang in.

The deafening roar and bright light stunned everyone, even 3 Charlie 6, who had been stupid enough to keep looking into the room after he had thrown the flashbang. 3 Charlie 6 recovered from his mistake however, and charged into the room, gun up.

2 Charlie 6 was moving down the hall toward the elevator when he saw 3 Charlie 6 get riddled by a hail of bullets. The Type III armor didn't mean much if you got shot in the face.

"Shit!" he cursed, and ran over to 3 Charlie 6. He was very dead.

"You bastards!" He tossed a grenade in, then decided it to be prudent to throw another in, just for good measure.

Kobayashi saw the grenade fly toward the VR and healing tanks, and had only enough time to scream out a warning.

"Everyone, get down!" The grenade detonated, completely wrecking the valuable equipment. Kobayashi only had another second before he saw another grenade tossed in, this time toward a group of orderlies who had taken cover near some boxes. It landed right near them and exploded.

Another soldier ran in, blazing away with his assault rifle.

From across the room, Kawasaki took aim with his P220 pistol, his hands shaking all the while. He fired three times, the gun jumping a bit higher each time he fired at the angry soldier.

2 Charlie 6 felt something hit his bullet resistant vest, and turned to face the threat on his left. It was then that he realized that there at least fifteen armed people in the room, and he had just turned his back to maybe four or five of them.

Nurse Kuroi, who was by Kobayashi, popped up and fired one shot into the vulnerable rear part of the body armor, penetrating it.

2 Charlie 6 felt a hot iron pierce his back. He went down, and felt more hot things poking their way through his body. There was no pain, just a sense of everything going dark.

Dammit, he thought. And I was so close to getting my honeymoon. Oh well.

2 Charlie 6 bled out on the floor, as several of the medical staff, following their duty, went over to see if they could save his life.

"He's gone," Kawasaki said, looking up at Nurse Kuroi, who was still holding the smoking P220 in her hands.

"How many people hurt?" Kobayashi yelled out. He saw three men down, their blood pooling on the floor.

* * *

Outside, Akamatsu had just finished off another soldier, and sent the rest of his squad running. It looked like they were pulling back, for now. It wouldn't be long before they came back.

"This is Akamatsu, the flanking force is down, but I think two got in facility."

"We just took care of them," Kobayashi's voice echoed somberly over the radio.

Luna didn't want to know what was going through that man's mind at the moment. "How many causalities?"

"Only three wounded."

"Understood, continue to hold, over."

"Roger. Kobayashi out."

"Akamatsu, continue your suppression of enemy forces, and let me know when they come back. If they come back."

"They will. Akamatsu out."

Luna took the break to reload the machine gun, with Artemis changing out the belt and feeding a fresh one into the chamber. She was startled to hear a noise behind her, and quickly turned around, unholstering a P226 and pointing it at the door.

It was only the Security Chief though. He was holding a Howa Type 64 and was dressed in a black uniform, with long sleeves and a braid on the left shoulder. His nametag said "Ooishi", a common source of jokes among the security personnel was to call his Detective Delicious, a pun on his name and plump figure.

"Chief, you gave me a scare," she said, holstering the pistol. "How are we holding up?"

"Not good," he replied, taking off his cap and wiping his brow. "Half of the security personnel are down, and three dead. I'm having some of the medical guys patch the wounded up, but we only have so much of that healing solution."

"Right…" Luna finished loading the machine gun.

"I don't know if we can hold off another wave of these guys," he said nervously to her. "I mean, I was never trained for this situation."

"Neither was I," Luna replied, sighing. "I'm just a comm officer."

"Could sure use those SAILOR units back here," he muttered. Luna probably should have admonished him, but there wasn't much point to that. A ripple of fire from the forest sent everyone back to their positions, hoping that help would come.

"Firing!" Luna depressed the trigger and sent a burst of fire zipping over the heads of some more attacking PMC troops.

* * *

Up above, seven UH-1s loaded with 1st Airborne Brigade troopers noticed the sound of heavy weapons fire.

"Fuck, those guys weren't kidding when they said they were under fire," the 1st Airborne commander said out loud.

"Colonel Takahashi," one of his staff officers said to him over the radio headsets; it was incredibly loud flying in the Huey, so they used the headsets to communicate with each other. "I just got word from Command; there's a series of terrorist attacks occurring across the world right now, and they want us to be on high alert."

Typical; intel and command were a couple of steps behind the game. "Did you ask them about the special forces unit here?"

"Yeah, I did. There's no unit operating here."

Takahashi looked at the staff officer. "You're sure?"

"Positive. All the SFG have been accounted for and are being deployed to deal with the current terrorist threat."

"Does command know the purpose of our excursion?"

"Yes, they said to continue to investigate."

"Tell them that there is massive gunfire emanating from the supposed SFG location and that we are investigating."

"Got it." The staff officer got on the radio and started to inform the rest of the group of the developing situation.

"Sir," the pilot of the helicopter said to Takahashi. His helicopter was assigned the callsign Super 61, taken from the pages of "Blackhawk Down." Takahashi didn't want to tell the pilot, but that helicopter had been shot down by an RPG, which started a long chain of events that led to the deaths of eighteen Americans and over a thousand Somalis. "There's a building, on the hillside over there."

Takahashi peered out the side of the helicopter, and saw large white building in the distance. A loud explosion suddenly echoed in the valley, with the fireball taking part of the roof of the main building off.

"Alright, hold up here until who we can figure out what the hell is going on he said to the pilot."

"Understood."

"Get me that 'Special Forces' unit on the radio."

Luna and Artemis ducked from the large explosion, fired from a Howa 84RR recoilless rifle.

"Goddammit, we're not going to be able to last like this!" Artemis yelled over the din.

"This is the 1st Airborne Brigade, we are on site and ready to deploy," someone said over the radio.

"Thank god!" Luna said. She picked up the receiver from the more powerful radio unit that was sitting near the machine gun. "This is 3 Alpha 6, we're in the large white building, need assistance and need it now!"

Takahashi heard the person who had called earlier over the radio, and responded to it.

"Hold on a second 3 Alpha 6, we know you're not a Special Forces Group, who the hell are you?"

Luna sighed and pressed the receiver to her head. She really didn't need this now, not when they were going to be overrun.

"1st Airborne, we work for a secret division of the Japanese government, and I would love to explain everything to you, but right now we need your help or else this PMC we're fighting against is going to wipe us out!"

"Did she say 'PMC'?" one of the staff officers asked. "The Nakanishi Group has one of those."

"Don't they run the security at our base in Chiba?" another pointed out.

"Great," Takahashi muttered. Things just got more complicated, and there was no easy solution to this problem. "Okay, 3 Alpha 6," he replied. "Mark your positions with green smoke and we'll come a get you."

"Uh…roger." Luna looked around for anything that might pass for smoke, but again, they didn't have much in the way of that ordinance.

"1st Airborne, we do not have smoke grenades, over."

"Shit." Takahashi facepalmed at that unfortunate piece of news. "Alright then, we're going in. Get that megaphone turned on; I'm going to stop all of this madness. Get moving."

The pilot of Super 61 moved the Huey forward, along with the other six in the formation.

"This is the 1st Airborne Brigade!" Takahashi yelled out over the PA system. "You are to cease fire immediately and to throw down..."

A ripple of gunfire from the forest put an end to any sort of chance of a peaceful resolution. Several bullets pinged off of the Huey, causing everyone inside to flinch.

"At least we know who the enemy is now," Takahashi said. "All units, engage hostile forces in the forest. The people in the white building are friendly, do not engage!" The helicopters started to dodge enemy fire, spreading out and started a holding pattern to attack the PMC in the forest.

"This is Lancer 62," one of the helicopter pilots said. "We're going to land your troops on the top of that building there with Lancer 63. How does that sound?"

"Roger. Lancer 62 and 63, approach the roof and get those troops in. Alpha 45 and Alpha 46, prepare to fast rope from helos and assist any defenders. Lancer 64 and Lancer 65, drop your chalks off on the roof after Lancer 62 and 63 do so, two at a time. Yankee 67 and 68, standby to deploy your troops at the entrance to the base, over."

"That's affirmative, we're going in."

Takahashi saw Lancer 62 and 63 swoop in from the south and quickly hover over the roof. His troops, Alpha 45 and 46, consisting of a squad each, dropped ropes and quickly slid down. Within thirty seconds, eighteen highly trained troopers were on the roof, weapons ready to go. The other two helicopters dropped their troops off on the roof as well, following the lead of Lancer 62 and 63.

"Yankee 67 and Yankee 68," the pilot of Super 61 said. "That's a lot of vehicles down there, take them out, over."

Yankee 67 and Yankee 68 swung back around and started their attack run on the line of SUVs parked on the winding road that lead up to the medical facility. Both were armed only with Type 62 GPMG machine guns on the doors, but it would be enough to disrupt operations. Plus, the troopers inside could shoot out (albeit inaccurately) at targets gunners on them opened up, strafing the line of vehicles. Bullets snapped against the modified, armor plated SUVs, but they sent people scattering.

"This is 61, I'm heading in for an attack run, over." Takahashi noted that they had rockets on the side of their helicopter. He vaguely remembered telling them that they needed some sort of heavy ordinance back at base.

Super 61 lined up for an attack run.

"Gotcha!" the pilot said. He pressed the fire button, and the rockets streamed out from pods on the side of the copter. Five SUVs blew up dramatically.

He breathed in deeply, relishing in the smell of smoke and burning fuel. "Damn, I love the smell of…rockets in the morning."

"Are you done?" Takahashi said to him.

"Uh, right."

That strike effectively broke the PMC, and they started to retreat down the hill, toward the highway, hoping to escape.

"Okay, they're running!" Yankee 64 reported.

Takahashi saw his chance to finally stop the battle. "Yankee 67 and 68, deploy your troops near the highway and cut them off. Don't kill anyone if you have to though."

"Roger."

* * *

The gunfire slowly died down as the 1st Airborne Brigade started to round up the PMC soldiers that had fled the area. She slumped down from the machine gun, exhausted by the fighting that had just occurred.

1st Airborne troopers stormed throughout the building, clearing out the place and making sure that they were disarming everyone. They might not be shooting at them, but they couldn't trust the people inside either, since they didn't know who they were.

A fire team got to the isolation rooms, and found that a recoilless rifle round had completely devastated the area.

"Oh jeez," one of the troopers said, looking at the remains of someone who had been in one of those rooms.

"That's gotta hurt," another one said. He reached for his radio. "This is 4 Romeo 6, we're inside, another casualty on second floor. Don't bother, he's in pieces, over."

"Roger. Continue operations."

The troopers finally got to Luna and Artemis' position.

"Sir, Ma'am, please step away from the machine gun, and place your sidearm on the floor," one of the troopers addressed.

They complied. Along with the security team and the medical staff, they were taken outside to be processed and to find out what exactly they did here.

As they walked outside, Luna looked up at the sky wrapped in an emergency blanket that the medical staff had provided her. The rising sun shown down on her, warming her tired and cold body, drenched in sweat from intense gunfire. Helicopters circled overhead, and she could see the 1st Airborne troopers rounding up the PMC soldiers. She did note that some of them were chatting casually with them, which made sense in some regard; many 1st Airborne troopers had served in the PMC after being forced out of the JSDF.

Again, Luna looked up at the sky, breathing in the cool, crisp air, smelling the freshness of the trees, mixed in with smell of cordite and smokeless powder.

It was going to be all right.


	53. Chapter LI: Queen's Gambit Accepted

**Chapter LI: Queen's Gambit Accepted**

**0800hrs, 17 December 2013, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan**

_"POWERRRRR!" Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear._

* * *

Raye hit the accelerator, lurching the Bugatti forwards. There was only fifteen meters worth of driveway to cross, but every meter was going to be hell.

The PMC had predictably blocked the exit with their SUVs, and they opened fire at the highly visible orange and black car. Some of them were behind the low wall that Lita had taken cover behind earlier in the mission.

Lita returned fire with the G36K, shooting off three round bursts at the people behind the wall. Some of the PMC soldiers ducked, but others continued to fired incessantly at the vehicle.

Raye continued to accelerate toward the blockade, bullets snapping past, cracking the windshield.

"At least I can fire now," SAILOR Moon muttered to herself, raising her M4 CQB and firing some rounds at the SUVs.

"Hold on!" Raye screamed. The Bugatti was a sports car, not an armored vehicle, and when it impacted the SUVs, the body on the front was heavily damaged. By design though, the Bugatti had its engine in the back and at least that was protected by the rest of the car. Lita was thrown forward onto the floor, hitting her head on the dash, and Serena almost followed suit but managed to grab onto one of the armrests and hold herself upright.

But it was enough. Two SUVs whipped around, tossed by the impact of the Bugatti, and Raye made an immediate left onto the road, using every single one of those 1200 horses to get away from that ambush.

"Holy fuck," Serena said, turning around in her seat to see the PMC soldiers get back into their SUVs to try to chase them, but it was kind of pointless with a two tonne vehicle that could barely make a hundred in fifteen seconds.

"We're not out of this yet," Lita replied, managing to push herself back into the seat.

"Sorry about that," Raye said to her. Lita just shrugged and kept pointing her weapon out of the window.

"How far are we from the highway?" Serena asked, still looking behind her. No pursuit vehicles, but they more than likely had friends in the police department or other PMC units out there, ready to stop them.

Raye brought up a map on her HUD to see how far away Yokota Air Base was. "We're still five minutes away from National Route 125, then it's onto Joban Expressway."

"Isn't that a toll road?" Lita asked.

"Uh…yeah….sure," Raye replied, wondering how they were going to get past that. They were going to have to find some way, because they needed to have protection against the wrath of the Nakanishi PMC, and with the terrorist attacks starting, the JSDF would have their hands full.

"Should we try for one of the JSDF bases?" Serena asked.

"I don't think we should do that. Nakanishi has security at all of those bases, and they might get us there. Yokota Air Base is one of the few overseas bases that haven't outsourced their security, due to their operational nature."

"Why would you outsource your security?" Raye asked. "I wouldn't trust some company to protect my interests."

"The world is more complicated than that," Serena said, but Raye had a point. If you wanted something done right, do it yourself. Raye continued to drive insanely fast, weaving in and out of the light traffic. Serena could tell there was already something wrong this morning, since at 0800 in the morning the traffic should be extremely heavy. But this morning, almost no traffic was out.

"That's weird," Serena pointed out to Lita.

"Let me get the news on," Lita replied. Thankfully, one of the side benefits of advanced technology was having a built in satellite radio and TV connection. Lita tuned into the NHK and was shocked at what was going on.

"They're reporting attacks all over Tokyo…" she repeated. "Mostly small things, but someone's hit the Sky Tree with a massive bomb. Other than that…nothing too terribly bad, but still…"

"Thirty seconds to the next waypoint," Raye announced, checking her HUD. "On the left, through the toll booth."

"Five finger discount," Lita said, readying her weapon.

"My idea exactly." Serena made sure that her M4 would do most of the talking if some smart-aleck toll collector was going to give them lip for not paying.

"What's that…?" Raye craned her eyes to the exit ahead.

"Up ahead!" Lita pointed. Several SUVs were blocking the toll road, called in by the others at Yamada's house. There was no way to go around it, and speeding through was rendered impossible by both the SUVs and the sharp corner that Raye had to go around when getting off of the highway and onto the expressway.

"How'd they know we were coming here?!" Lita exclaimed.

"Don't ask questions!" Serena screamed back, raising her M4 and started to fire. Raye had only a couple of seconds to process all of the data feedback, stop, change directions, and to get away from the roadblock.

"Need an alternate route!" Raye hissed, to no one in particular. On her HUD, she saw that there was a road running on the side of the toll way, and that there was only a small chainlink fence and a metal barrier in the way. About five hundred meters down the road near a construction company, there was a patch of ground that was elevated, and would allow for an improvised ramp onto the toll road. There, the PMC couldn't keep up…hopefully.

"Everyone, hold on!" Raye yelled. She quickly used the handbrake to slide the car along the four lane road, creating a huge plume of smoke that covered the car. The PMC continued to fire into the smoke, but without thermal goggles, the fire was pretty much random.

"I can't see!" Lita shouted back.

"Give it a second!" Raye was relying purely on her HUD to guide her drift to the access road. Fifty meters…twenty five…ten…five…

Raye instantly released the handbrake and accelerated down the access road, crossing the five hundred meter distance in about fifteen seconds. The PMC was left scrambling to get into their vehicles, and by that time, it was already too late.

"Raye…Raye! What are you doing?!" Serena's eyes started to widen as she saw the small ramp near the chain link fence. She still was getting over the power drift that Raye had just conducted.

"Hold on! Again!"

Lita grabbed onto Serena, and they held to each other for dear life. The Bugatti hit the small clump of dirt with a thud, and suddenly Lita felt herself flying. The actual flight only lasted for a couple of seconds, but for those couple of seconds, Lita could sense everything. Birds in the sky moved in slow motion. The few cars below seemed to be stuck in molasses. Even her heart beat slowly. Thud…thud…thud….BAM!

The Bugatti slammed onto the hard asphalt with a resounding crash, the metal scraping against the road with an ear shattering screech. The durable frame of the car held though. One did not pay three million dollars (or about 242.30 million yen), to have a pissant vehicle. Although conducting high speed chases in this particular vehicle was highly discouraged, to say the least. The front fender, already heavily damaged, came off with an unglamorous bang, flying off to the left and into someone's Camry.

"Sorry!" Raye yelled out of the window, even though the driver couldn't hear her.

Raye recovered from the impact, and accelerated the vehicle forward.

They drove for a couple of minutes before seeing the impact of the terrorist attacks on Tokyo.

"My god," Serena said, looking out of the window on her left, past Raye. The Tokyo Sky Tree was billowing smoke, as were some other buildings in the area.

"Didn't Luna say she contacted the police and stuff?" Lita asked, craning her neck past Serena to get a good look at what was going on. She wondered how many more attacks had happened, or had been stopped.

"Doesn't mean they listened," Serena replied, glumly. She could hear the sirens of several police and fire brigade units in the distance, but they quickly passed as Raye continued to floor the accelerator, well past 300 kilometers per hour. The police at this point didn't care about some speeders; there were more pressing matters at hand. There was some traffic on the highway at this point, but Raye easily zipped past the smaller cars and continued her drive toward Yokota AFB.

It worked both ways, really. While the SAILOR team could get to Yokota faster, the PMC could also set up roadblocks without molestation from the police or the JSDF.

If they could catch up with them. The sheer speed of Raye's driving cut down the travel time from two hours…to forty minutes. With the normal traffic dispersed due to the terrorist attacks, the highways were virtually clear. Later news reports displayed the car, captured by CCTV cameras, the newscasters noting that it might have belonged to the late CEO Ichigo Yamada, the head of the Nakanishi Group. Again, it was merely a footnote on the wave of terrorist attacks occurring that day; hell, a wave of shoplifting got all the news channels all riled up, let alone a massive event such as this. The media had much better things to do than to run a human interest story on yet another corrupt CEO and his playthings. That was reserved for those really slow news days.

"Another interchange, coming up in about one minute," Raye told them.

"Where are we?" Serena asked.

"Near Misato," Lita replied, looking at her HUD. "Raye, you're a fucking manic when it comes to driving."

Raye just smiled, and hit the gear change lever on the steering wheel.

"How much further?" Lita asked.

"Looks like about fifty kilometers or so," Raye replied, looking at the HUD. "Taking the interchange loop to the Tokyo Gaiken." A huge overpass loomed in front of them, a symbol of Japanese precision and engineering. The smoke from the burning buildings still could be seen in the distance as the damaged Bugatti zoomed through the light traffic and toward the interchange.

"Company," Lita noted. Several police cars, along with some PMC SUVs were setting up a checkpoint at the toll booth. The police seemed to be having a huge argument with the PMC soldiers, as it was not the place of a PMC to interfere with policing duties. Some cars were lined up at the checkpoint, but there was still enough room to get by if they drove fast enough.

"Got it." After what they had been through in the last couple of hours, this was nothing. Raye shifted the gears up, the hum of the W16 engine in the back revving up a bit; but for such a fast car, it was incredibly quiet (as noted on that British show, Top Gear). The police and PMC soldiers didn't even notice something was wrong until the Bugatti blitzed past them, swiping the toll gate aside and continuing down the Expressway. Several policemen jumped into their Mazda RX-6 patrol cars, but before they could get them started, the Bugatti was already a kilometer away.

"That was easy," Raye stated, continuing to accelerate away from the roadblock, leaving behind the flashing lights of the police cars in the distance.

It only took another couple of minutes to get to the next interchange, onto the Kan'etsu Expressway, and then after shortchanging the tollbooth there, the car only took another two and a half minutes to travel the distance it needed to National Route 463, which was a small two lane road. Even so, the car easily dodged whatever traffic was on the road, much to Serena and Lita's chagrin.

"Raye, could you be more reckless?!" Lita exclaimed.

"Well, I'm trying not to let those bastards set up anymore roadblocks!" she replied distractedly. Lita rolled her eyes and then continued her watch out of the window. "Goddamn."

Lita noticed something up in the air all of a sudden. It looked like…

"Uh…is that a helicopter?"

Lita leaned out of the window to get a better look at it with her HUD. "It's an OH6," she reported. "Its not a JSDF one though."

"PMC?"

"Yeah, most likely."

"What's the armament on it?"

"Give me a second." Lita asked the onboard computer database on her HUD about the Hughes OH6, then leaned out of the window to compare the weapons loadout on the helicopter outside with the database. That was obviously not a good idea, considering that they were travelling at high speed. Her hair whipped everywhere, and it was difficult to breathe, let alone see.

"Not good."

"What's the problem?"

"It's got two miniguns on the side." Lita pulled back from the window, and gasped for some air. She kept her eye on the helicopter though. "And a couple of rocket pods."

"Oh shit. Did you get that Raye?"

Raye was already pushing the speedometer past 350 kmph, and was looking to hit 400. "How fast can that thing go?" she asked distractedly, trying to keep focused on the mission at hand. She swept past a man on a scooter, and knocked him off in the process. He would later die of his injuries.

"Only 278 kmph, at the top speed."

"But it's in front of us," Serena noted. "Raye, drive faster."

"I'm going 400 kmph!" she shot back. The dotted lines on the road blended together, they were going so fast. At this speed on a test track, it was dangerous. On a small two lane highway, near suicidal. More traffic started to appear as people started to realize that this was indeed, a very bad situation and that they might want to be home with their families.

"Serena, I gotta slow down, or I'm going to lose it!" she yelled.

"Just get us away from that helicopter," Serena replied. Raye slowed down to a more manageable 200 kmph, fast enough to dodge traffic, but not fast enough to shake the helicopter.

The OH6 opened up with its miniguns, blazing away in the general area of the fast moving vehicle. The 7.62mm rounds zipped past, tearing up the highway but missing the Bugatti. And the gunner wanted to be more selective with his fire; this was one of the most densely populated areas in the all of the world, and despite the terrorist attacks, he knew better than to wantonly fire into civilian areas…provided if he was ordered not to.

In the chopper, the two pilots were stunned by how fast that car was going.

"Uh, Checkmate Actual, this is Star Four One," the pilot said over his radio, "This car is clocking over 200 kmph, we cannot continue pursuit at this rate, over. We'll be at Joker fuel if we try to keep up."  
"Star Four One, continue to engage if possible, break. Other units are trying to coordinate with the local police to set up a roadblock, but it'll take some time, over."

"That's a negative, Checkmate Actual," the pilot replied, straining to his tiny helicopter to the fastest possible speed. He had already seen that car blaze through two checkpoints already, and another one wasn't going to stop these guys at all. "Request permission to use the rockets."

"Permission granted, just stop that vehicle, whatever the cost."

"Roger. Star Four One, out."

Star Four One fired a volley of four rockets from the pods on the side, again, missing. A warehouse on the side of road blew up in a spectacular fashion. While not damaging to the SAILOR team, they did make quite a stir in the car.

"Fucking hell!" Raye cursed. She wanted to go faster, but again, pushing 400 kmph was nigh impossible on the small Japanese roads.

Raye checked the fuel gauge. Already, it was a little bit below three-quarters empty. To go faster meant that they would use up more fuel, and possibly crash into something…no, it was guaranteed that they would crash into something. To go slower meant instant death at the hands of that helicopter up there.

The helicopter fired another volley of rockets, this time, hitting what seemed to be like a high school on their right.

"Shit!" Lita said, looking at the smoking ruin at what used to be a school building. "That was a high school!"

"Shit!" the pilot yelled at the gunner. "That was a high school!"

"They said whatever the cost!" the gunner protested.

"Fuck." The pilot got on his radio to at least try to clean up the mess they were making here. "This is Four one to Checkmate, alert local authorities to an explosion at Sayamagaoka High School. Massive civilian casualties, over."

"Negative Four One, continue pursuit, over."  
"Roger," the pilot snapped back. "Out."

"Serena, we have to do something about that helicopter or more people are going to get hurt!" Lita said.

Serena considered the options, as Raye continued to dodge traffic, which was becoming more heavy as people tried to escape the carnage behind them.

"Raye, stop the car!" Serena ordered.

"What?!"

"Stop the car! They'll overshoot! Get ready Lita!"

Raye immediately deployed the brakes and the Bugatti went from 200 kilometers per hour to zero in five seconds. The rate of deceleration was so rapid that Serena could feel some of the blood rushing in her head. But the car was relatively stable as it came to a sudden stop. The OH6 completely overshot them, surprising the pilot.

"They stopped! I'm bringing us around."

"Lita, now's your chance!"

Lita got out of the car and knelt down beside the open door and aimed the G36K up at the helicopter. It was half a kilometer away, but only one hundred meters up in the air. It circled about, coming back for another strafing run.

"Come on…come on…" she muttered.

"Star Four one, engaging!" The gunner hit the trigger, and fired both the miniguns and the rockets.

"Gotcha!" Lita sighed in on the vulnerable rotor, just above the cockpit. She opened up on full automatic, her prosthetic arm keeping the recoil of the G36K down, allowing her to stay on target at a moving helicopter some half-kilometer away from her. Several rockets zipped past, as well as the bullets from the miniguns blazing up there.

Star Four One's pilot felt the impact of a couple of dozen bullets hitting his helicopter. The windshield in front of him was riddled with several bullet holes, but was rated enough to stop a 7.62 bullet. However, he noticed a massive shaking in his controls, and looked up at the rotor.

"Ah, fuck." The rotor was smoking and sparking. He got on the radio to tell his boss that there was a big problem.

"Checkmate Actual, this is Star Four one, we are hit, requesting permission to break contact and land at Yokota AFB." Already, Star Four one was getting out of there, heading toward the base.

"Roger, we'll get permission from the air control there, head to Yokota for emergency landing, out."

"Nice shooting," Raye said to Lita, who was climbing back into the car.

"Where are they headed?"

"It looks like toward…Yokota Air Base," Serena noted glumly.

"Great…" Lita grumbled, but there was nothing that they could do about that.  
"Come on," Raye said to them. "We need to get going." Raye started the car up again, and drove at a quick pace toward Yokota.

As the Bugatti Veyron approached the entrance to the base, Serena noticed the chaos that was emanating from around it. Some smoke could be seen emanating from inside the base, and a large hole had been blasted into one of the walls on the outer perimeter. Already, there was a long line to get in, from returning off-duty service members, civilian police trying to keep fleeing civilians from entering the base, and Security Forces with armed Humvees, their fingers nervously tapping on the triggers.

"What the hell…" one of the security officers said, looking at the battered, yet beautiful car approaching his post. It had completely bypassed the line waiting to get into the base, and was actually going the wrong way on the opposite side of the road. Several SFs trained their weapons on the car, but there was no way in hell that someone would pay that much money to blow it up in a suicide attack. Tempting, but Al-Qaeda didn't have that much money. The base was, of course, on FPCON DELTA, and anyone entering the base would be searched thoroughly.

"Driver, stop your car!" one of the security officers yelled out in Japanese. It helped that they memorized Japanese phrases by rote in order to better communicate with the locals. "Or you will be fired upon!"

Raye stopped the vehicle immediately, jerking everyone forward and causing Lita to fall forward, again.

"Ow!"

"Sorry."

The security officer who had yelled out to them approached, his M9 in hand and ready to go. He was followed by more SFs with M4s.

Raye rolled down the window, and the Security Officer approached the car, M9 at the ready.

"Uh…" both of them said. Raye's English wasn't the best, so Serena stepped in to help out.

"We're…we're looking for…uh…" She didn't have any identification on her, and trying to explain in English about the situation was going to be extremely difficult.

The officer then noticed the multitude of weapons in the car, which snapped him into high alert mode. At the same time, several PMC SUVs came screeching around the corner, having finally guessed the location that the three of them had been heading.

The PMC SUVs, like Raye, ignored the line to get into the base and accelerated toward them, stopping a scant fifteen meters away from the Bugatti. Several more PMC soldiers got out and readied their weapons. Now the Security Forces were really confused; who were they supposed to shoot at again?

Serena, seeing her chance, started pointing at them and shouting frantically. "Japanese government, we work, them…away! Get away!"

The officer put two and two together. They were trying to get away from that stupid PMC that had been harassing them all this year, especially in regards to replacing base security with them. That was something they could get away with in the states, but overseas, not so much.

"Okay, pull over to the side, inside of the base over there, and we'll have the officers take you to the detention center."

Serena got the "detention center" part; at least it would mean that they would be safe from the PMC for now.

"Go, go!" he urged as the PMC SUVs approached. Raye revved the engine and pulled inside of the base.

"They've got weapons!" the officer yelled out to the others. "Make sure you secure them!"

Raye got to the side of the road, where a couple of officers ran up to escort them to the detention center.

"Ma'am, your weapons, please," the officer tersely said. Lita complied, handing the G36K over to the security forces. Raye and Serena did the same thing. They then escorted the three of them into a Humvee, and drove off.

As they drove away, Serena saw the security forces officer arguing with the PMC to leave the area. Finally, the ordeal that had begun some nine hours earlier was finally coming to a close.

Star Four One landed on the tarmac, near one of the runways. The small helicopter was immediately surrounded by Security Forces in Humvees.

"You there in the helicopter!" someone shouted out over a megaphone. "Power down your engine and toss your sidearms out onto the ground!"

The pilot and the gunner complied, tossing their Beretta 92s out onto the tarmac.

"Step out of the helicopter with your hands on your head, interlocking your fingers."

Again, the pilot and the gunner cooperated, and the Security Forces moved in, flexcuffing them and shoving them both into a Humvee, where they would be taken to a detention center.

Serena, Lita, and Raye however, had already beat them to it.

"Heh, suckers!" Raye smirked as the two of them were pushed back to a detention cell.

"Fuck off," the pilot said to her, before being pushed away by the guard.

The three of them waited for what seemed to be an eternity, until they were taken away from the detention center, to one of the HQs for the 5th Air Force. There, they were taken to a small, windowless office, with a conference table, some chairs, and nothing else. More waiting ensued.

"So…" Raye said to Serena. "How was my driving?"

That got a laugh from all of them. The Security Forces guarding then looked nervously at them, then returned to looking as stoic as possible.

"You got us here, didn't you?" Serena replied with a smile.

"Indeed, I did."

"Where did you learn how to drive like that?" Lita asked, fiddling with her wavy hair. It was slightly mussed from the day's activities, but for surviving several gunfights and a car chase, it wasn't in too bad of shape.

"Kobayashi let me train on the VR sim, but I liked the driving section of that the best."

"I don't remember any driving section," Serena pointed out. "When did that happen?"

The door opened suddenly, and everyone turned around to see who was coming in.

It was only a staff officer, who was carrying some coffee and cookies. She placed them on the table, and gave the girls a smile.

"Thank you," Serena said, in her very choppy English.

"Someone will be along shortly to interview with you," the staff officer replied in Japanese. Obviously, someone had been eager to go to those cultural sensitivity training sessions. She bowed politely, and left the room.

"What kind of cookies are those?" Lita grabbed one, looked at it, and sniffed it. "Oatmeal raisin," she said, sadly.

"I can't stand those kind," Serena griped. "Any chocolate chip?"

"Yeah, there's a few right here." Raye gave one to Serena, and one for herself. Lita munched on the cookie she had taken, not wanting to seem greedy. The coffee went untouched.

"I like Cappuccinos," Serena said, looking at the pitcher of coffee. "But not when it's pure black."

"Why those?" Raye asked. "You don't seem to be a coffee person."  
"I had a couple with my parents sometimes," Serena continued, nibbling on the cookie. "We used to go to this Italian place in Ginza, called Daze, Dazzle, whatever. I can't remember what it was called, but they had some pretty good cappuccinos there, from what I remember."

She fell silent for a second, remembering the life she had left behind.

"I can't wait till this is all over," she moaned, wiping away some tears. "My mom…dad…brother…"

Lita patted her on the shoulder, with her prosthetic arm. "It's okay…you can see them before we get these guys."

"No…" she said resolutely all of a sudden. "No…we've found ourselves in a situation that needs to be resolved. I can wait a couple more months if I have to. Plus, Lita…Raye…I know you two don't have a family to go back to…"

Lita smiled weakly. "Yeah, I guess that's right." She looked over at Raye.

Raye wiped a couple of tears from her eyes as well, trying not to choke up at the memory of her late Grandfather.

The door opened up again, this time with the staff officer and a couple of other people. Serena and the others stood up, but one of them, a man in his late fifties with three stars on his shoulders, waved them down.

"You must be the SAILOR unit," one of them said, after sitting down opposite of them.

Everyone gave each other some looks.

"The President was personally saved by the actions of the other two in Washington D.C yesterday evening," he said, tapping on his Blackberry Playbook. "Amy and Mina, wasn't it?"

Serena exhaled on that revelation. That was good news indeed.

"Now, tell us who you are."


	54. Chapter LII: Counterstrike

**Chapter LII: Counter-strike**

**0540hrs, 17 December 2013, Somewhere in the Northeastern United States**

_"Everyone must work together to recover from an attack and reposture for subsequent attacks. Immediate actions are necessary to treat casualties and respond to hazards such as contamination, damage/fire, unexploded ordnance, etc." Air Force Handbook 32-4014, "USAF Ability to survive and operate procedures in a NBC environment."_

"_Learning to use the tools of modern warfare is the difference between the prospering of your people and utter destruction._" _Lieutenant General Shepherd, Modern Warfare 2._

* * *

USAF Lieutenant General Josephine Pearson had ended her workday yesterday dodging a grenade that had been rolled at her car as she had left work at the Pentagon. It had been complete chaos there, with several vans worth of terrorists rolling up right past security and into the parking lot where they had spilled out, shooting at the mass of workers leaving for the day. For the time being, no one knew how many people died, or were just wounded. The Metro station nearby looked like something out of a horror movie; there was blood covering the entire platform when several bombs went off and for weeks afterward, the stench of death could be smelled in there. Now, after she was grabbed by an entire squadron of Security Forces people and shoved into an armored SUV and then onto a waiting Lear jet, she found herself in an underground complex somewhere in...well, wherever they were.

"Does anyone know what the hell is going on?" she asked the other people in the conference room. There was Vice Admiral Shelly Thompson of the Navy, Lieutenant General William Landis of the USMC, and Lieutenant General Joseph Sampson of the Army were the only ones in the room at the moment.

Thompson shrugged. "I don't know. Last thing I remember was getting shot at near my office at Pensacola and then I get swept up by a bunch of NCIS agents, who took me here."

"Gibbs, wasn't it?" Landis asked.

"Yeah, it was him. With that Israeli girl and some sleazebag agent as well. Would not shut up about movies."

"They're always a blast to deal with," Landis replied, rolling his eyes.

"How about you?" Pearson asked Sampson.

"I was already here," he stated matter-of-factly. "I was touring this facility when I got orders to stay put. Next thing I know, most of my colleagues back at Leavenworth are in the hospital or dead."

"Jesus," Landis muttered. "They hit most of the USMC Camps around the nation, but they held most of those terrorists off."

"What's this about Nakanishi being behind all of these attacks?" Pearson wondered.

"I'm just as in the dark about it as you are," Thompson reiterated. "I haven't gotten any word from NORTHCOM or anybody from the JCS. In fact, I haven't even been able to call my daughter."

"That's because you are the Joint Chiefs."

The President of the United States of America flashed on the video link on the screen in front of the room. The generals stood up, at attention before POTUS called them to ease.

"Sit down everyone."

They did so, looking at the President, awaiting her orders.

"I don't know if you've been informed, but the entire JCS was taken out yesterday evening by the terrorist attacks."

"Jesus," Landis muttered. "That's fucking ridiculous. How the fuck did that happen?"

"General, mind your language," POTUS admonished, but Marines would be Marines. "We don't know."

"Who's the Chairman?" Pearson asked.  
"I am." Two more screens popped up, moving the president aside. Pearson immediately recognized General Oliver Martin of the US Army, commander of CYBERCOM. The other General had held several high ranking positions in the Air Force, but they were mostly training commands with little combat interaction. Well, both of them now held positions of the Chairman of the JCS, and Vice Chair, respectively.

"What happened to everyone else?"

"Pearson, we lost everyone else," Martin stated stoically. "It could have been a lot worse though."

"Even more worse?" Landis asked.

"Vice chair?" Martin said to him.

The Vice Chair cleared his throat before going on. "Two nuclear weapons were stolen from US stockpiles and were going to be used in Washington DC and New York City in order to inflict massive damage on both the political structure and the financial institutions of the United States."

He let that sink in for a moment, before carrying on.

"However, these weapons were recovered in time by…" He paused for a second before looking at the President. "…Er, the President will discuss that at length. Chair?"

"Wait, wait a second," Sampson interrupted. "There was an Empty Quiver situation? How did that happen?"

"We're trying to figure that out right now," the Chair replied. "However, there is not much that can be done about it, as the nuclear weapons have been recovered and an extensive count of all the nuclear weapons in current the current stockpile is underway."

"Jesus," Landis said, throwing up his hands. "This keeps getting better and better."

Martin nodded.

"The Nakanishi Group is behind all of these attacks; I've just gotten word from some of the Cyberwarfare units about the nature of the cyberattacks on our systems shortly before the main terrorist attacks occurred. They were caused by programmers working for the Nakanishi Group in Europe. Thankfully, we passed the word our European Allies…"

Landis scoffed at that.

"…and they've managed to eliminate that particular threat."

Several staff officers came into the room and brought classified documents, giving a rough sketch of the aftermath of the attacks.

"But they still took a beating," Landis said, looking at the data in front of him. "Several prominent leaders dead, including the President of Germany, military bases attacked all over Poland, Russia, France, Italy and the UK…"

"Plus the Suez canal," Vice Admiral Thompson added. Of course, the Navy would be very worried about that particular situation.

"What do you know about it?" Landis asked. He flipped through the files; there was almost no mention of it. Landis did note that most of the staff officers here were Air Force, and without communication between the different branches, priorities in information gathering would dramatically different.

"Nothing much. Sir," she said to General Martin. "How bad is it at Suez?"

"The entire canal is blocked off."

"All of it?" Thompson was in shock. "General, are you sure about that?"

"Absolutely. We have multiple eyewitness accounts from both the Egyptians and the USS _Vantage,_ who just passed through there moments before the explosion took place. We have a KH-13 loitering above there..."

He picked up the phone and asked for someone to display the KH-13 feed.

"We removed the Nakanishi software from encryption program that was used to secure the feed, but right now, it's broadcasting on a thirty second delay so that the feed can be encrypted by another program."

"How many of our spy satellites are operational?" Landis asked to the former CYBERCOM Chief.

He sighed. "Just this one."

The KH-13 showed a huge, five square mile section of the Suez Canal on fire, with at least thirty to forty ships ablaze, with several more aground. Already, there was a massive backup of cargo and military vessels in the Canal.

"Jesus, that's bad," Pearson said.

"How much time does it add to go around the Cape of Good Hope?"

"It adds about 2700 more miles to the trip."

Admiral Thompson leaned back in her chair and sighed. This was not good; the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean would be unable to get through to the other side, and the long trip around would be a massive drain on resources, not to mention the time element. She sat back up, and noticed that the Secretary of Defense was not there with them.

"Where's SECDEF?"

"He's in transit to Cheyenne, and he's busy trying to get all of our allies to help us out too," POTUS replied.

Pearson and the rest of the brass in the room were quickly getting lost; without information, they could not operate at all and make good command decisions. Even the documents in front of them and the satellite feed on the screen only painted a very small picture of what was actually going on.

The situation was ironically, reversed; the JCS was supposed to brief the President, but in this crisis, it was the other way around.

"First question to all of you," the President asked. "How are we going to hit back against Nakanishi?"

"Jesus, we just got here," Pearson protested. "We have no information about any of their attacks, their motives, their forces…"

"Where did you get all of this information?" General Sampson asked POTUS. "All of our communications systems are down or severely impaired, besides this one dinky satellite here. Even the cell network is down."

"From the Japanese government…" Hamilton hesitated on that statement, causing the entire genre savvy cast in the conference room to question where in the hell she got that from. But they knew better than to question the commander and chief, and the briefing continued.

"Anyway," the Vice Chair said, interrupting the President. He was cool like that. "We've received information about a Nakanishi Base in Socotra from the Japanese government, since they are the parent country of this corporation."

That seemed to quench the JCS's curiosity for now, and they got back to planning a strike against the Nakanishi Group.

"Ma'am, like I've been saying again, without information I cannot even begin to formulate a plan of attack," Admiral Thompson protested.

"I cannot help you on that," POTUS retorted, obviously getting frustrated. "You're just going to have to make do with what you have at this point."

"Fine." Thompson shuffled through some of the papers in front of her for a second, then quickly came up with a plan.

"My course of action would be to have Combined Task Force 150 assist in the cleanup of the Suez Canal. It is imperative that we get that Canal cleared up, or else our operations in the Middle East and possibly, Asia, will be severely impaired. I also suggest that we also put the Sixth Fleet out to assist in the recovery and repair operations there as well." She looked at the info sheet in front of her; it gave locations of all the deployed ships and strike groups at sea, at port, or under repair. But the US military was used to having instantaneous information at their fingertips, with their satellites, their spy planes, their ELENT and SIGNET...without all of that information, they could only guess about what their next course of action was going to be.

"What about the base at Socotra?"

"Well, for now, we can put CTF 151 and 152, but that's only a stopgap measure. They were meant only for Counter-Terror operations, and I don't know what we're going to find on that island. Those CTF groups might be enough, but I'm not going to take any chances." Again, she looked at the information sheet, and located a Carrier Strike group at sea in the Indian and Pacific Oceans that would be of use, along with several other US Task Forces.

"When communications are back up, Carrier Strike group One, Three and Ten, Task Force 76 and 79 are going to be deployed to assault that island."

"That's part of the Fifth and Seventh Fleet, correct?" the Chair of the JCS asked, looking at his own info sheet; again, he was Army.

"That's correct," Navy replied.

"How long will that take?" the Vice Chair asked.

Admiral Thompson did some quick calculations. "Um…"

That was not a good sound to hear from a top ranking military official.

"At maximum performance, maybe three to four days. However…with our operational capacity severely hampered by recent events…I can give you maybe seven days."

That was bad news indeed. A drop of fifty percent efficiency from the most powerful military force in world was quite a feat. Getting all of those Carrier Strike groups organized with limited communication was going to be a feat unto itself, and having to unfuck all of the damage that Nakanishi had done to their C4ISTAR was only going to make things a lot worse. Getting a carrier across the world with the best technology and guidance available? Only three or four days. Getting three Carrier Strike groups to move a couple thousand miles with limited communication and resources? Only seven days…maybe. That was a task even with all the best technology and communications, was going to be a tough nut to crack, let alone with a hampered C4ISTAR.

"Okay then," President Hamilton, unfazed at least by the bad news. Both the Chair and Vice Chair didn't look happy though, but that was the price they had to pay for depending on private contractors. "At least we have some way to block off access to that island, whatever might be on it."

"Air Force," POTUS turned her attention to General Pearson.

Pearson was not going to be outdone by the Navy on this one.

"Ma'am," she said to the President. "I can have a variety of fighter and ground attack aircraft cut off the island within forty eight hours…provided that we get most of our communications back online."

Again, with the communications.

"Good."

"We can do recon flights ahead of the Navy, and assist in Army and Marine operations, if they decide to land on the island in force. From what it looks like…" Pearson looked at some of the few satellite photos that had been taken in the last couple of days. They were from meteorological ones though, and were not high resolution enough to actually make out anything. "There doesn't seem to be much of…well, anything there. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't exercise caution."

The President nodded. "I don't think blowing up the entire place would be also a good course of action. There could be materiel that we could use, for research and development."

The JCS nodded in their approval.

"Alright then, that's a good plan, for now." Most of this stuff was knee-jerk reactions, but that's all they had to go on right now.

The meeting was interrupted by several staff officers bringing in coffee and doughnuts. Normally, this would have been an egregious breech of procedure, but everyone needed coffee right now.

"Oh thank god," Landis said, reaching for a doughnut and a mug to pour coffee into. "Sorry Madame President, but we're running on empty right now."  
"That's quite alright," POTUS said. She motioned to her COS to please, get her another cup of coffee right now, or else she might fall asleep right then and there. The Chair and Vice Chair, sensing an impromptu break, ducked out of the picture for a second and appeared with mugs in their hands, spilling to the brim with the black stuff.

General Pearson looked at the tray that had been had brought in; she noticed a small salt shaker on it, despite not being anything to put it on. As she watched, both the Navy and Marines put a dash in their coffee.

"Why do you guys do that?" Air Force asked both of them.

"It's to curb the bitterness of it," Marines replied.

"It's too strong for Marines?" Air Force raised her eyebrow at that statement.

"Hush," Landis replied, with a smile, satisfied that he finally had coffee now.

"Right, let's get back to business."

The newly formed JCS turned their attention back to the President and the Chair of the JCS, ready to get going again.

* * *

"Finally," the President said, after two hours of a barrage of question and answers, planning, and arguments later, "I want to revel something to you."

"And what would that be, Madame President?" Landis griped, tugging on his tie. It had become more and more loose as the day wore on.

"Don't be coy, Marine," POTUS snapped back, but it was understandable the way everyone was acting. Even battle hardened Marines had their limits, despite all of the "Semper Fi" bravado they put out. She softened her tone immediately after that.

"Sorry," Landis replied after that.

"We've all had a long day, General Landis," the President replied, her voice kind again. Pearson looked at her watch; it only read 0730. "Anyway, the information we got from the Japanese government?"

"Yes, what about it?" Admiral Thompson asked.

"It was actually from a special unit that the JSDF ran…well, nominally ran, but it was under the direct control of the PM. This group was called…err…" She checked her notes that her COS had prepared for her.

"It's called the…Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force. SAILOR-SF or SAILOR for short."

"That's quite a mouthful," Pearson noted; this was coming from a branch of military infamous for their obtuse and confusing acronyms.

POTUS nodded. "Indeed."

"They're a group that's been set up by the Japanese government, supposedly to combat hostile interests counter to Japanese policy, but in reality, they were inadvertently taking orders from the Nakanishi Group in order to further their financial progress."

"That's…" Air Force began to say, but couldn't find much else to add at that particular moment. A confused expression crossed almost everyone's face at that point.

"Er…" Navy added.

"What…" the Marines muttered.

"Um…" Army questioned.

"I know it's a bit confusing, but two of their members just saved my life, and possibly yours by exposing the information about the attacks on the United States and on other nations as well."

"That's a bit farfetched, don't you think?" Admiral Thompson asked of the President.

"What did they do, waltz into your office and tell you everything?" Landis scoffed.

"Actually, yes they did, General Landis." The President was looking very seriously at him now.

"Oh. Um…" He slunk back into his chair, having nothing else much to say after that little faux pas.

"And the Congress members who brought them here sacrificed their lives, including one who was a Marine, General, to tell me of this crazy plot by the Nakanishi Group to take over the world. I thought it was crazy, until they showed me the nuclear weapon that they had fought over and won from that damned PMC. So, this entire situation is crazy, and many lives have been lost, but we have an advantage, and I will use it. I have given this SAILOR team full access to US military facilities and I expect that they will be honored in full."

"Where are they now?" Sampson asked.

"At Yokota Air Base."

Pearson made a mental note of that. "Do you know what they're up to?"

"Not at the moment, although I am going to be briefed by them in the next day or so."

She took a breath, exhaling and the inhaling the recycled air on Air Force One.

"Thank you all for stepping up to this challenge. I know it must be hard, but this is an extraordinary situation that we all find ourselves in. Please continue with your work, and we will have daily briefings from here on out."

The President terminated the link, and left the Chair and the Vice Chair on the screen.

"Alright, our next item on the agenda is the status of the Reserves and of the National Guard…"


	55. Chapter LIII: Mise en scène

**Chapter LIII: Mise-en-scène**

**1100hrs, 18 December 2013, Yokota Air Base, Tokyo, Japan**

"_Let there be people among you, who invite to the best; and command that which is just and forbid that which is evil, and they shall be happy." Sura 3.104, Quran._

* * *

"What's our next move?" Amy asked, in a video conference with Dr. Kobayashi, Dr. Kawasaki, Nurse Kuroi, Luna, Artemis, and the rest of the SAILOR Team. The entire Medical facility was in shambles, with most of the equipment destroyed and ruined. It was lucky that the US military finally knew about them, and had allowed them to start conducing operations from Yokota Air Base, in Tokyo. They had set up in a disused hanger, used for fighter jets during the Korean War. Armed Security Forces units patrolled the outside, mainly to keep people out, but also to keep the SAILOR team in. The U.S military wasn't all that trusting at this point. Their living quarters hadn't been set up as well, and so cots had been set up as a temporary solution.

"I don't know what the hell is going on here in Japan," Luna replied. "The PM hasn't taken any stance on the assault on our facility, or the death of CEO Yamada, or anything for that matter. It seems like he's completely shut down." Repeated calls to the Ministry of Defence and the PM's office had come up with confused responses, ranging from "We'll get back to you," to "Who are you again?" And with Col. Iwasaki dead, the command of the unit actually fell to one of the SAILOR team; Serena.

There was a newscast going on in the background, describing the aftereffects of Operation TAKE HOLD. Japan had been mostly spared against the onslaught of terrorist attacks that had occurred in the world; some damage to US and JSDF military installations, a couple of government buildings burned, but overall, not too bad. If you could call a couple hundred people dead, and another could hundred wounded, "not bad". This was basically that natural gas explosion in May, turned up a couple of notches. The raid on the Nakanishi HQ and the shootout at the Medical facility however, was being kept quiet at the moment, mostly by the PM's office. Everyone knew now that Nakanishi was the enemy, so cordoning off their HQ was a prudent and laudable idea.

In some other news, some idiot in Saitama had been arrested by the police for carrying a Samurai katana around with him and entering an office building, demanding to see one of the bosses there. Turns out, he owned the damn place, and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But from it seemed, he was a complete jerkass and his daughter, who was with him at the time didn't even intervene all that much because she was both mute and deaf, and her father hadn't even bothered to learn Japanese sign language. Yeah, what a douche.

Already, the news that the Nakanishi Group was behind all of this had serious repercussions in Japan. The stock market crashed, prompting the government to shut it down for now at least. The official reason was the terrorist attacks but that was circular logic; if Nakanishi was perpetrating the terrorist attacks, then shutting down the Nikkei was going to actually benefit them by playing into their hands since Nakanishi wanted to disrupt commerce. Either way, contracts were cut immediately with them, and arrest warrants for the company officers went out. Not that it mattered, since they were all overseas or dead. Seizure of Nakanishi assets also proved to be extremely difficult, or next to impossible due to the nature of the corporation; since they had contracts with major governments and banks, tracking down all the funds and resources that they had was difficult because all of those agencies used Nakanishi software and resources. In short, the world wanted to take Nakanishi down, but there was no easy way to do it since they had become so reliant on their technology and assistance.

"In the meantime, we need to find a course of action," Luna continued. She turned to Serena. "You're the commanding officer for this unit now."

That felt weird to Serena; she had never been called by her rank or bestowed the privileges of it. It was just a formality that Colonel Iwasaki had bestowed upon them. But now it carried real weight, and it was time to make some hard decisions concerning the recent events.

"Amy," she said after a second of thinking that over. "What do you think we should do?" The brains of the group should have at some idea of what they could do.

"It's a long shot…" she began.

"Then let's hear it then," Serena asserted. Any idea was better than nothing.

"We need to take out the leadership. Unlike most terrorist groups, Nakanishi needs to have a centralized leadership in order to function. With Nephrite out of the way, the North American arm of Nakanishi has completely got to shit. But as long as the leaders of the other regions of Nakanishi remain alive, they can retain control of not only their respective PMC detachments, but financial institutions, technology centers, underground bases…"

"Underground bases?" Serena asked, imaging a huge underground lair, with Beryl cackling behind a large wooden desk. Perhaps she would be stroking a white Persian cat as well.

"She means it in a metaphorical sense," Luna replied, trying to clear up Amy's explanation. "Nakanishi more than likely has safehouses and businesses disguised as other institutions, allowing for operations to continue."

"How are they operating even though they've pretty much pissed off the entire world?" Lita wondered.

"Some people are willing to do business, no matter what the moral implications might be," Artemis chipped in. "They can lay low, switch names, transfer funds to secret bank accounts…"

"Like our Swiss one," Raye pointed out.

"Yes, like our Swiss one. But more illegal."

Raye raised an eyebrow. "How illegal was ours then? Besides the Nazi money?"

Artemis scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Well…in addition to holding Nazi money…there were some drug lords we stole from too. And maybe some of that money from the Madoff scandal as well."

Raye immediately wished she hadn't known that. From the video uplink, Amy rolled her eyes, having already gotten that information a long time ago; the Madoff money was new to her though, she would have to check on that next time.

Artemis, sensing a general mood of awkwardness in the room, changed the subject back onto the Nakanishi Group. "Anyway, the point is that they can still operate in the world despite all of these terrorist attacks, and perhaps that was what they wanted to prove. To show the world that they were a good investment, and despite the world going to shit, they could withstand externalities."

"Whatever they did, we put a stop to it," Serena grinned.

"We're not out of the woods yet," Amy pointed out. "Nakanishi still has that PMC, and a huge hold over technology the government uses. It'll take years to clean up the mess they left behind."

"Can you give anything else about leadership?" Kobayashi asked. He wasn't as up to date as the rest of the SAILOR team, having spent the last couple of days trying not to end up dead.

"Amy and Mina have already taken down Nephrite," Luna said, bringing up an image of him, along with a newspaper clipping that had a picture of his dead body in the SUV. "The other officers, Jadeite and Zoisite are still at large. Beryl and Kunzite are assumed to be at Socotra already, and that's out of the question until we get these two officers first."

"Why aren't they at Socotra?" Serena asked.

"We kind of put a big hole in their plans," Raye winked.

"Anyway," Luna said, continuing despite the interruption. "Zoisite and Kunzite are known to be lovers." She brought up pictures of them. Serena could see why they were in a relationship with each other; Zoisite was very effeminate looking, with beautiful, wavy hair and a fair skinned face. Kunzite was a bit gruffer looking, but it didn't take away from his physical beauty.

"Where are they right now?" Kobayashi asked.

"We tracked Zoisite somewhere in Italy," Luna said, bringing up some emails and GPS tracking software to illustrate where they had lost him. It read "Florence, Italy."

"How did you find them there though?" Serena asked.

"Dr. Kobayashi had some old contacts in Italy that informed him of this development. I'll put him on."

There was a couple seconds of scuffling about, then Dr. Kobayashi came into view.

"Doctor-person," Serena asked him, "What were you doing in Italy?"

"Let's just say that the government needed some help on a project similar to this. I got out before they started doing anything serious, but that's part of the reason the Japanese government picked me up for this program." Kobayashi adjusted his glasses as he talked, obviously bringing up memories of his past, happy or otherwise.

"Interesting…"

"Ahem," Artemis cleared his throat.

"Oh, sorry, continue," Serena apologized.

"Thanks to Amy and Mina however," Artemis continued from Luna's briefing, "Jadeite has been tracked down to their regional HQ in Bangalore."

"Oh joy," Mina griped.

"That 108th Defence Force is sieging the area, but they haven't been able to break through yet. Perhaps you could repay them for bailing your asses out last time?" He turned to Luna. "Can you set that up?"

"Will do. I'll make sure that they get there," Luna nodded. Amy was about to protest, but realized that there was a lot more at stake than her personal comfort. She just hoped that it wouldn't last too long. India was so weird sometimes.

"Don't we need to operate with the PM's permission though?" Dr. Kawasaki finally spoke up in the back, asking the obvious question.

"Weren't you listening earlier?" Kobayashi replied. "The PM is out of commission. We're on our own for now. We've got some help from the Americans, but they're tied up as well with all the attacks going on." Even several days later, some bases still had terrorists or insurgents holed up in housing areas or in tough to reach spots; at Baghram Air Base, it was beyond bad, with the Taliban practically overrunning the base and destroying everything they could get their hands on. A NATO task force had to basically obliterate the other half of the base that the Taliban hadn't destroyed in the fighting trying to root them out. They were still pulling bodies out of the rubble.

"Yes, the President assured me that we would have whatever help from the US Military. But like you said, they're tied up at the moment."

"Of course," Luna nodded. "I will attempt to get into contact, again, with someone higher up to tell the PM of this plan of action."

"What do we do then when it's all over, though?" Mina spoke up in the background, behind Amy.

"What do you mean?" Kobayashi asked.

"When this is all over. When we've killed Nakanishi, their officers, Beryl, all of it…what then?"

There was silence. No one had thought that far ahead.

"Don't you think we should focus on getting rid of Nakanishi first?" Kobayashi suggested, but they were already going down that very slippery slope.

"You know what, yeah," Serena added, looking at Dr. Kobayashi. "While I am willing to see this thing through, I will not spend the rest of my life killing."

"Same here," Lita piped up.

"Err…" Raye said, sheepishly.

"You can stay on Raye, if you want," Serena said. Raye just shook her head.

Serena heard Mina and Amy whispering on the other end, Amy's hand covering the microphone as they talked. After a moment, they came back into the conversation.

"Mina and I agree," Amy replied. "We are not willing to continue the operation of the SAILOR Team after this operation in Socotra is concluded. This team was set up to advance the agenda of the Nakanishi Group, and it would be fitting that we disband after we complete their destruction. We will go to the media after that operation, and tell them of the existence of this unit. Then we will return to our homes…and our parents." Amy spoke that last part extremely slowly. Her mother flashed before her eyes, then disappeared.

Kobayashi looked at Nurse Kuroi and Kawasaki. They both shrugged. There was nothing that they could do about the situation; if they wanted to disband, then it was up to them.

"What if the Japanese government doesn't let us?" Lita asked.

"We'll make them comply," Amy instantly replied. She was way ahead of the others in that regard. "I'll put together a packet detailing all of our of our operations and government officials involved in this operation. If the government refuses to cooperate with our demands, we release it to those government officials and get them to back down, or we'll implicate them in public view. If they still refuse, then more direct action will be required."

Serena raised an eyebrow at "direct action."

"But why shouldn't we go the media anyway?" Raye wondered.

Serena was taken aback by the question. Raye had finally said something worth considering for a change.

Mina, even though she was thousands of miles away, sensed Serena's hesitation and moved to answer Raye's piercing question.

"Raye, if we go the media now, it would completely undermine the government, in addition to compromising us. We would be also held accountable along with Nakanishi Group officials, members of the government and the JSDF, and we would hard pressed to take down the remnants of the Nakanishi Group."

"Why would we be implicated?" Raye persisted. Even Mina was getting concerned about Raye's uncharacteristic behavior.

"Look, there's enough information on those servers at Nakanishi HQ to put us away in jail, or at least make the rest of our lives very difficult," Amy butted in. "Going to the media would only create a huge public outcry, on top of the anger that is going to result from the Nakanishi attacks. We know that we didn't do anything wrong, but the rest of the world doesn't."

"So we're just to let them get away with it?!" Raye asked, her voice trembling with pent-up anger.

"They're not getting away with it," Mina pointed out. "The government is going to come under a huge amount of flak for its dealings with the Nakanishi Group, and like what we've said before, these people need to go down if we are to have any semblance of security in the world today." Mina's normally chipper mood was completely serious now, her eyes blazing into the screen. If Mina was this determined, then it was serious game time. "This way, it'll allow Japan to continue on a nation, and to save face, both domestically and internationally. Secondly, it'll give us a way out of the mess we've found ourselves in, get us back to our homes, and away from this way of life."

"But…" Serena added. "If the nations we attacked find out if it was us…then…"

"It could be very bad," Mina finished. That cast a long pall of silence over the group. Of course, Raye, Lita, Serena, Mina and Amy were not to blame for the creation of the unit, but angry nations (with special forces units) might take their vengeance out on the five of them, and perhaps even Japan itself if they were to be exposed. America would keep its silence, of course, having some vested interest in keeping the SAILOR team secret, but other nations would not be as discreet or forgiving. That was why they had to keep things under wraps until everything was cleaned up and lose ends tied off.

"So it's decided," Luna said to the entire group gathered, breaking the silence. "We go after the Nakanishi leadership, take down their base of operations in Socotra, Yemen. Then we disband and close down shop, go to the media, and go home."

"That's a good plan for me," Lita said.  
"Can't wait to take these fuckers down," Raye replied, cracking her knuckles.

"Okay, we'll get planning then. We'll meet back in here in two hours to get everything set up. Luna out."

She terminated the link with Amy and Mina.

"Hey, I hate to bring this up now," Nurse Kuroi said in the back, "But we need to run some more medical checks on you guys."

The SAILOR scouts groaned when they heard that.

* * *

"Ow!" Lita winced as Nurse Kuroi poked her with a needle. Lita couldn't tell what it was, but whatever she had injected her with, it hurt like hell.

"Sorry."

"Kuroi-sensei, Is all of this really necessary?" she asked Kuroi, who was checking stuff off of on a piece of paper on a clipboard. The frigid air from outside occasionally blasted through the hanger, causing Lita to shiver in discomfort.

"Unfortunately, it is," Kuroi replied, checking a box off. "Since everything we had was destroyed at the medical facility, proper post-mission treatment is going to have to rudimentary like this. At least until we can get spare parts and the like."

"And since Nakanishi was supplying everything…"

"You guessed it. We can't get anything replaced until we find a contractor with the right clearance."

"Why doesn't the government do it themselves?" Lita asked, reaching for her long-sleeved shirt next to her to back on. Wearing that body armor all day hadn't been fun, and at least she had a spare change of clothes given to her on base. Unfortunately, the shirt screamed "BUSH-CHENEY 2000", but Lita didn't know that, being functionally illiterate in English and despite the training they had received.

"You haven't been in government all that long now, have you?" Kuroi smirked. She saw Lita quickly putting on the shirt, trying to avoid any questions about her prosthetic arm.

"How's the arm?" Kuroi said, stopping her from putting the shirt on.

"It's…fine," Lita hesitated, and in the medical community, hesitation meant something was up.

"Let me take a look at it," Kuroi firmly insisted.

Lita sighed, knowing that resistance would be futile. She held out her prosthetic arm to Kuroi, and she examined it.

"Did something happen with it yesterday?" she asked. There were scratches all over it.

"Yeah, I used it to destroy some communications equipment in the Nakanishi HQ."

"Anything else?"

"I hit a couple of people."

Kuroi chuckled at that.

"Let's take it off and see what's up." Slowly, she removed the arm from the stump, and placed it aside. Kuroi then removed the sleeve that helped to protect against friction and minor wear and tear on the remaining part of the arm.

Lita looked at the arm stump, and let out an audible groan. The stump was rubbed raw, and it was so red that it looked like a really bad case of sunburn. It wasn't that bad, but without their medical technology...

"Yeah…that's what I thought," Kuroi sighed. She reached inside a first aid kit and pulled out a small tube of healing solution. She applied it to the raw skin, and Lita shuddered as it made contact, the familiar cooling sensation removing all the pain and misery she had been put through since yesterday. The red skin turned back into its normal color, and Kuroi wiped up the white fluid that had been left behind.

"Well, if it's this bad with you, I don't know how well Serena is going to do then too," Kuroi said, placing the arm back onto her stump. "Just be careful, okay? Otherwise…"

"I know, I know," Lita said back.

Kuroi took off the latex gloves she had been wearing and tossed them into a nearby trashcan, taking another pair from a box nearby. "Thanks Lita."

Lita just nodded, and hopped off of the examination table.

"Next!"

* * *

Luna had finally gotten in contact with General Ishimura, who was the go-between for the PM and Col. Iwasaki. It seemed forever ago since he had visited the Medical Facility and spoke to Kobayashi about the future of SAILOR. Kobayashi would have also been there, if not for Serena's prosthetics acting up during her medical exam, much to everyone's distress. So it was just Luna, alone, against one of the more powerful men in Japan.

"General, sir," Luna said. Ishimura looked completely beat.

"I'm sorry about not being in contact with you all," he replied, wearily. "It's been so busy around here." He took a sip of coffee, the sustainer of militaries around the world. "I heard about the assault on both Yamada's house and your facility. I'm really sorry about that, but that dammed PMC has been giving us trouble ever since they got orders from that Beryl woman to wipe out your program." He looked at Luna for a second, then realized her CO wasn't there.

"Where's Colonel Iwasaki?"

"Sir, he was killed on the assault on the Medical Facility." She conveniently left out the part that his death was indirectly caused by a mutiny on her part.

"I see. Who is charge now?"

"General, Captain Tsukino is in charge of the unit."

He blinked at that statement. "Uh…"

"They do have the ranks of Captain," Luna pointed out.

"Right…of course." He had forgotten about that.

"Have you talked to the PM?" Luna asked.

"He's really busy, like all of us are," Ishimura responded. "But I can convey any request that you need directly to the PM." Luna gave him a look. "Really, I promise," was his reaction.

"What's your next move?" he asked. "I presume that's the reason why you're calling us."

"Yes," Luna said. "We just got out of a meeting, and we're going to come up with a rough sketch of what we're going to do."

"First, we are going to go after the Nakanishi leadership. I've gotten some intelligence about the whereabouts of two of the officers, and we're planning to go after them."

"What will that prove though?"

"Excuse me?"

"What will that prove?" the General asked again. "I mean, that's all well and good, but…"

"Sir, they caused this mess, and they need to be brought to justice for their actions."

Ishimura sighed. "That's a stretch, Lieutenant. However, I agree with you on that. The PM is going to be up to his eyeballs with bad PR, and bringing down what remains of the Nakanishi threat is going to be his top priority afterward."

"Good."

"What else do you have?"

"As you might know, they have a base of operation on the island of Socotra, Yemen. How large or what exactly is there remains unknown at the present, but I think we land the SAILOR team there so that they can deal with the threat that Beryl and Kunzite have there."

"Beryl and Kunzite are there?"

"Yes sir. Amy and Mina…er, two of the SAILOR team members interrogated the COO of Nakanishi America, and he gave them information about them being at the base at Socotra."

"Interesting. So we would have to go after them there, no matter what."

"Exactly."

Luna paused for a second, taking a sip from a water bottle nearby.

"General, there's one other thing," Luna said, after explaining the plan. "This unit is to disband after our operations have concluded. We will then reveal this unit to the public at large."

Ishimura was not expecting that one.

"But…"

"No 'buts', General," Luna interrupted. She was most definitely crossing into no man's land now; already she had one count of mutiny under her belt, but this might be the last straw. "This unit was illegally set up and funded, used to conduct illegal operations even under International Law, not to mention Japanese Law, and that's just the legal aspect of it. The moral implications of this unit are even worse. So we are disbanding."

"And if we don't let you?" Ishimura threatened, but it was mostly for show. He needed to see what type of cards they were playing.

"We will inform every military serviceman, MP and elected official involved in this operation of their standing in this illegal operation, the legal and social ramifications of their actions, and will ensure compliance from them. We will even go to the media, if it comes to that."

"So, blackmail."

"If you call it that."

"Fine," Ishimura conceded. "But if you go to the media now, you would be shooting yourself in the foot. They would hang you out to dry."

"Then we should find alternative means of working this out," Luna dryly said. "Like letting this unit disband and releasing the operatives back into the civilian world."

"I thought their parents thought they were dead," Ishimura pointed out.

"They'll be in for a shock." Luna's face betrayed no expression, but she knew that it would be a tearful reunion.

Ishimura sat back in his office chair, sighed and took another sip of coffee. Luna sensed some hesitation, but to just hit the point home she continued on with her reasoning.

"General, they'll come after you. At least this way, we can give you an honorable passing out."

Ishimura nodded. She was right; once the news hit the airwaves…or rather, the internet, they would be all over the JCS, even more so than now. More than likely, they would all tender their resignations, and along with the PM, be cast out from the political and civil scene forever. They were going to probably have to anyway, and giving the appearance of cleaning up their own messes would help soften the blow.

"I'll convey this to the PM," he said. "It seems like the best way to get ourselves out of this mess."

"It's your mess," Luna snapped. "Oh, and let the PM know that the Americans know about SAILOR; it would be in his best interest to talk to the President about that."

"Of course," Ishimura said, resigned. Here he was, basically taking orders from a wet-behind the ears lieutenant. Of course, what they had asked of her in the last six months had ensured that she would have access to such sensitive information to which they could be blackmailed. Nice one.

Luna glared at the General for a little bit, then terminated the video link.

Damn them. Damn them all.


	56. Chapter LIV: The Plan

**Chapter LIV: The Plan**

**1300hrs, 18 December 2013, Yokota Air Base, Tokyo, Japan**

_"Prior to departing you home base, you must consider where you are going…Many People deploy and are surprised to find several of their rights, freedoms, and customs are not accepted or recognized." Air Force Manual 10-100, "Airman's Manual."_

_"Go ahead and hate your neighbor, Go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of Heaven, You can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing Come the judgment day, on the bloody morning after, One tin soldier rides away." One Tin Soldier._

* * *

"Alright, what are we going to do?" Serena asked group around them.

Lita, Serena, Raye, were sitting back in the conference room, having just come back from the Burger King near their newfound visitor's lodging, on the air base. It was a comfortable, apartment style housing, although they wouldn't be staying there for long.

Serena couldn't ever remember a place like that being open in the rest of Japan; all she had seen was McDonalds and Subway. Perhaps they were being outcompeted? At least the place was open; war or no war, Capitalism chugged on, even on a military base.

Mina and Amy were on the video screen, helping to give more advice. Both of them looked completely exhausted.

"We have three main objectives," Amy said. "First, we are going to take down the Nakanishi corporate officers. Second, we take down the base at Socotra. Third, we blow the lid on this entire operation."

"Well, the last one is pretty self-explanatory," Lita replied, taking a sip of soda from a cup. She was surprised how big it was. 32 ounces? What was that in milliliters?

"It might be a tricky one, but I'm going to work with Luna and Artemis to put together a briefing packet for the major news outlets."

"What's going to be in it?" Serena asked.

"After-mission reports, the PM's correspondence with the Nakanishi Group, Nakanishi internal memos that we picked up from their servers in Tokyo and the United Kingdom, and whatever we can find once we can get to Socotra."

"What about Sudan?" Raye brought up, hesitantly.

"What about...oh. Oh." That brought everyone to a standstill. No one wanted to remember that tragic incident.

"That's what I was talking about, Raye, when we shouldn't go to the media right away," Amy pointed out. "How do you think that'll make us look, if we can't pin it to the Nakanishi Group?"

"But people might understand!" Raye protested. "We can't just bury that part of our past! What about the hundred innocent people who died that day? Do they not count as well?"

"Or they might not understand," Mina piped up from behind Amy. "Raye, what we did that day was not our fault."

More like, what you did that day, Mina dryly thought. I wasn't the one who had the flamethrower. Akamatsu should have taken that away from her, his precious BMW be damned.

"Look, Raye, it'll all come out in good time, but we NEED to stay focused on killing the last of the Nakanishi Group before they can regroup and do something even worse. Whatever Beryl has cooked up, she's going to keep pushing forward with whatever evil plan that she's got going. So, I'll take of the third part of the plan. Don't worry about it, okay?"

Raye wanted to protest some more, but she could see that the rest of the group was turning against her in that regard. "Alright, fine. But don't go skimping out on details, okay?"

"The entire group will have a say in this, I assure you," Amy said.

"Thank you, Raye," Serena patted Raye on the back. She hadn't been the same ever since then, and this entire turn of events had been extremely hard on everyone.

"Okay. Moving on to the other company officers, who should do what?" Amy was now drinking some coffee on the other end, much to everyone's surprise.

"Luna mentioned the Italian government located Zoicite. Something about Dr. Kobayashi having some friends there and stuff."

Serena nodded at that statement. "I think I should take my team and go take out Zoicite. You guys have been to India, and know some people there. It would simplify operations on that end, and we could get assistance from the Italian government."

"That's a good course of action," Mina noted. "We'll go after Jadeite in India."

"Alright then. Let's break it to the others."

Twenty minutes later, the Luna, Artemis, and the others were gathered in the conference room.

This time, the call to the PM had gone through, and he would be joining them for this briefing.

The call was a four way one, with Amy and Mina in America, POTUS in Air Force One, the rest of the SAILOR team at Yokota Air Base, and the PM at his residence in Tokyo. It was certainly possible, and with the secure link that Luna and Amy had set up earlier, free from Nakanishi eavesdropping.

"Madame President, Prime Minister," Amy spoke to the two leaders. "We'll make this brief, since I know you have much to do."

"Tell me about it," Hamilton replied. She looked at her cell phone for the time. 0000hrs. Another sleepless night. She found it strange that this foreign special operations unit was in essence, working for her. That must have violated a bajillon laws in the process, but there wasn't much choice in the matter. They were in a better position to take down the Nakanishi Group, since they had been working defacto for them.

Prime Minister Hasegawa simply nodded, partly out of tiredness, but out of shame as well. He had lied, time and again to these people, and how there were not only cleaning up his mess for him, but even letting him off the hook…ish. He had been briefed earlier that the President knew about SAILOR, and that he should expect some serious questioning from her.

"Why isn't Serena giving the briefing?" Lita whispered to Raye. "She's the one in charge, right?"

"Her English isn't all that good, remember?" Raye hissed back. "And it seems the President of the United States trusts Amy more anyway."

"Shh, you two," Serena admonished. The three of them shut up and got back to listening to the briefing.

"Ma'am, our plan is threefold; first, we go after the remaining Nakanishi COOs and disrupt their leadership. Second, we go after their base in Socotra. Third…well, we'll get to that point later. For now, let's focus on the first two."

"Do you know where they are?"

"Yes, we've tracked down one officer in Florence, Italy, and another is under siege in Bangalore. We have some old contacts that our medical staff have dredged up, and they provided a general location for his location. "

"I've heard." The massive siege had been underway, and India, a country usually ignored in the major media outlets despite its size, was suddenly all over the news channels.

"I'm asking for some help getting back into India," Amy asked. "Our last stay there…well, we caused quite a mess and I'm afraid they won't be so kind this time around."

"I can allow access," the President said confidently. "Same for the Italian government."

Hasegawa mumbled something along the lines of "Yes, I'll do that too," and the briefing moved on.

"This base at Socotra…" POTUS asked her, looking at some notes. "We don't know anything about it. All we know on this end is that the Nakanishi Group has it on lease from the Yeminis, in exchange for helping to develop their petroleum industry."

"We've been unable to ascertain much," Luna interrupted. "Sorry," she said, as the President gave her a look. "We haven't come up with anything on the Nakanishi Servers about this facility."

"Understood. Why shouldn't we just bomb the place?"

The President had no intention of doing so, but she needed a good reason why they were just sieging the place instead of blowing the ever-living fuck out of it. Maybe they would blow the ever-living fuck out of it after they got done with the island, just to be sure.

Luna tapped on some icons on her tablet computer. "Well, we did notice that the Nakanishi Group transferred a bunch of data from their servers in Japan and the United Kingdom to Socotra, but we've been unable to access any of it remotely. The only other option is to go in there and retrieve it physically."

"I see. And some of that information might be useful how…?"

"It'll might be important for cleaning up Nakanishi influence in the world, and perhaps future research and development. But the main reason is to take out the leadership, Beryl and Kunzite. They hold the key to breaking down the entire structure."

"What about Beryl and Kunzite?"

"Taking them alive…might pose a problem," Amy said. "They've violated so many treaties and laws in so many different countries, charging them with a crime, let alone prosecuting them would be extremely difficult."

"There's always the World Court," Serena pointed out.

"Right…" POTUS and Amy replied, not swayed at all. Amy continued on. "A Precision strike by our team, and I do mean our team, would obtain what information they know, eliminate them, and provide a path for your forces to take credit for taking the island without too much fuss."

Hamilton pondered that option for a second. It sounded too good to be true…and from what she had been told about the SAILOR team, along with some information that had been sent over by that "Luna" person. It looked like they could be up for the job, although Delta Force or the SEALs would be her choice. But since nobody knew of this unit…it could work. Even the general populace knew who Delta was, so sending in a foreign unit would help shift the blame if something went horribly wrong. She didn't express that point though to them however.

"And the third point?" the President asked. She needed to get off of that subject and onto something else.

"Excuse me?" Amy said.

"You had a third part to your plan."  
"Oh, yes. This unit will disband and go to the media, exposing the true extent of Nakanishi operations in Asia and in the world in general." Amy said it so nonchalantly that it took almost everyone off guard.

Ah shit, POTUS thought. Shouldn't have asked that one.

The President did a very bad job at disguising her emotions on that statement, coming off as a bit shocked as it had the potential to be quite embarrassing. Hasegawa, as usual, said nothing.

"Are you sure that's wise? The last part, I mean."

"Absolutely Madame President," Amy said to her. "The world needs to know about the secrets of the Nakanishi Group…how they used us, how they made us to carry out their agenda, how they manipulated an entire nation, a nation that has only wanted peace after suffering from the ravages of nuclear warfare. Madame President, that is what we're going to blow the lid off of this entire program."

So much for a deniable operations team. If news broke about this SAILOR team…the shit was really going to hit fan on this one.

"What's stopping you from doing it now?" the President asked. She looked at Hasegawa, but he was in a stupor, almost unable to respond to what was going on in the conversation. "Mr. Hasegawa. Mr. Hasegawa!"

"Yes…?" he said dimly.

"Please, we need you here," she admonished.

"Yes, of course," Hasegawa replied, wearily.

Amy continued on. "Madame President, releasing this information before the Nakanishi Group has been completely and utterly destroyed would only tip our hand, and might cause them to do something hasty. They would be able to at least anticipate some of our moves now, but they'll be able to successfully distract the rest of the world from their predicament if they can shine light on secret special forces units running around uncontrolled."

That makes no sense, POTUS thought. If the Nakanishi Group wanted to reveal the SAILOR unit…hell, if she wanted to reveal the SAILOR unit, then all of their nice planning would go up in smoke. They could do it in an instant, so why was the Nakanishi Group silent all of a sudden? Repeated calls to the island base at Socotra went unanswered, and from the task force stationed there, no movement had been observed. No demands had been heard from them as well. It just seemed that they were in a holding pattern, waiting and watching. She had been thinking about putting an invasion force onshore, but to be safe, most of the ships had been prevented from putting away teams on the island. That might change in the next couple of days, if they deemed it safe enough to put some Navy personnel ashore, along with some Marines and other units.

"Amy…I'm confused," the President said. "Why not just let us handle it? Can't you break the news now?"

"Madame President, this is our mess. This is our responsibility. If the Prime Minister hadn't created us, we would be in for a much bigger mess than we are in right now. So in the interest of Japan, in our reputation, and perhaps the betterment of all parties involved, we will take care of this. We're just on par with any of your Tier One units, and we've only been around for six months or so. Plus, if things go south, well…"

Amy knew exactly what the President was thinking. She didn't want to risk any more involvement, and a bunch of dead Navy SEALs or Delta Force operatives did not make for good publicity, let alone the operational effectiveness of the US military. But the President would back them 100 percent of the way, that was for sure.

* * *

"Thank you for your plan, and for letting me know," POTUS said to her. "The Prime Minister and I will discuss this issue briefly and get back to you."

POTUS cut the feed with them, and turned her full attention to the Japanese Prime Minister. "Mr. Hasegawa, what do you think?"

"What…what do I think?"

"Yes, what do you think?" Hamilton said, trying to hide her irritation. She did not like to repeat herself, and it was clear that the Japanese PM was stalling for time.

"It sounds like a good plan…except for the last part, to which you pointed out the flaws."

"But it would do more harm to you than for me," Hamilton pointed out. "And you're the one in charge Mr. Hasegawa, not I."

This was a lost cause. Hasegawa was going to agree, no matter how he tried to reason his way out of the mess he found himself in. He looked at his desk that he was sitting at, longing for that flask of whisky that would dim the pain that he had been feeling all these days.

"I don't see what other choice we have."

"Very good then."

President Hamilton looked at him for a second. He was tired, and his body showed the great strain that had been placed upon him in the last couple of days.

"Prime Minister, I'm ashamed of you."

Hasegawa could only bow his head lower, out of apology, but also to avoid the piercing glare of the President.

"We did everything to help you out with the tsunami in 2011. When you needed us, we were there. When you needed aid, we sent everything we had, even though in our country, thousands barely scrape by in the economic downturn. This is the thanks we receive? Tens of thousands are dead now, men, women, and children in the senseless violence. And you could have stopped it! You could have stopped the Nakanishi Group!" POTUS had to reel in her anger. She had to remain professional, or at least, the veneer of professionalism.

"And you think we weren't grateful?!" the PM snapped back. POTUS recoiled a little bit from his outburst, but quickly regained her composure. "I lost my only child in the tsunami! We never even found her body. I was denied the opportunity to at least properly cremate my child…Madame President, you are mistaken in your assumptions. We were all blinded by the Nakanishi Group! I had NO choice in the matter. They…they…"

Hasegawa trailed off, his energy spent. President Hamilton sighed at the pathetic sight, and decided to end this conversation.

"Sign off on your SAILOR unit and have them move out. Or do you want me to take command personally for your problems?"

"N-n-n-no. I'll do it."

"That's the spirit, Mr. Hasegawa. Now if you excuse me, I have some other business to attend to, so if you would mind briefing this team that you're supposedly in charge of, that would be great."

She terminated the video connection to the Japanese PM before he could get a response in.

The PM's face flashed up on the video screen again, surprising everyone.

"Everyone, listen up." Hasegawa's voice pierced the tense air around the small conference room in the hanger. "The President of the United States and I have agreed to your plan."

There was a collective exhaling amongst everyone gathered.

"You may begin your preparations as soon as possible, and to rid the world of the Nakanishi Group," the PM said tiredly.

"Easy for you to say," Serena said out loud. Six months ago, such an insult would have been punished severely. Now, the PM of Japan was a joke, a laughingstock, and worst of all, seen as an ineffectual and pathetic leader.

"Contact my office if you need anything," the PM said, ignoring Serena's comments. He terminated the call, leaving only a blank screen.

"Let's get ready then," Serena announced to the SAILOR team.


	57. Chapter LV: New World Order

**Chapter LV: New World Order**

**2000hrs, 18 December 2013, Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States**

**_"_**_Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony." President George H.W. Bush._

* * *

Deep within Cheyenne Mountain, there lay a bunker, secure under 2000 feet worth of solid granite, and protected by 25 ton blast doors. The Stargate Program wasn't there, unfortunately, but the command and control facilities for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, were.

NORAD had mostly moved their operations to Peterson AFB, but the command and control facilities were still prudently located inside Cheyenne Mountain hardened shelter. Inside, all the buildings stood on free-standing springs (1380 of them), absorbing the impact of any nuclear explosion. In addition to military facilities, there was a medical office, complete with dental and pharmacy services, a dining hall, two gyms, a post exchange, and a barber shop in case of the unthinkable. This facility could withstand a multiple nuclear blasts 1.5 miles away, giving at least some sense of security.

During the Cold War however, the USSR targeted so many nuclear weapons on the facility that in an event of a nuclear war, there would be nothing left despite all of the preparations that the US military had put into making the facility survivable. At least with the threat of nuclear war (somewhat) out of the way, the President, along with their advisors and staff could reside there in relative safety. It wasn't part of the Contingency Plan, but when most of the communications, computers, and everything else the military used, let alone the government, was compromised, finding shelter in the most hardened and secure place was certainly a viable option.

President Hamilton was in a private conference room with her COS, some of the White House staff and Secretary Freidman. In front of her was a large screen, with several world leaders on it. From right to left, it was Prime Minister Hasegawa of Japan, Prime Minister Robinson of the United Kingdom, and Prime Minister Krishnan Anthony Pannikar of the liberal United Progressive Alliance. He was short, by western standards, with a completely bald head, but despite being from Kerela, he was fairer skinned and had pursued a less hardline economic policy back in his own home state in accordance to what he felt like was the new development paradigm. That being said, they were still very wary about letting big corporations in, and this last incident was probably going to be the straw that broke the camel's back. The reason why the meeting had only been called between these four nations was because Japan was the host nation of the Nakanishi Group, and had some explaining to do, the United Kingdom, like the United States, had suffered greatly at the hands of the terrorist attacks, India was currently sieging one of the Nakanishi Group Officers, and was willing to call for assistance in dealing with that threat…for a price, of course. And in some way, shape or form, the SAILOR team had come into contact with those nations, with the exception of the UK, which the President trusted enough to indulge that secret with. The other G20 nations, like Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and China were out of the picture, dealing with their own problems at the moment. Italy however, had located one of the Nakanishi officers, and had offered assistance to the US government (and by extension, the SAILOR team) to take down that particular threat. And with something this secret, the more people became involved, the more chance something could go wrong. Like it or not, President Hamilton had only these three nations to deal with, one of which the US had only opened up friendly contact with, and the other responsible for the series of attacks that had engulfed the entire world.

"Madame President," they all answered.

"Thank you all for taking this call. Mr. Pannikar, I know it must be difficult getting up at this hour."

"I usually get up at this time anyway," he replied, the thick Indian accent clouding up some of the English he was speaking. "But anything to discuss this pressing matter at hand."

"Mr. Hasegawa." POTUS smiled at the PM, but it was one of those Pam-Am ones, using only the zygomatic muscle of the face, meant to convey politeness, not friendliness.

"Madame President," he replied in that lispy Japanese accented English. The conversation yesterday with her weighed heavily on his mind.

"Prime Minister Robinson," she turned to face his image on the view screen. "I heard that you fended off a terrorist attack yourself yesterday. I trust that you are well?"

"It was a very odd situation, indeed. But I survived, and here I am." he replied. Typical British understatement.

She nodded to him, and moved to the first item on the agenda.

"First thing's first, I'm putting together a task force to surround the Nakanishi Group complex on the Island of Socotra. My Defense Secretary will give the details on the plan to deal with the Nakanishi Group."

She nodded at Freidman.

"Gentlemen," he said in a soft tone.

"Can't hear you," PM Robinson said.

"Sorry, Gentlemen, can you hear me now?" Freidman said a bit louder.

"Yes, that's much better," Pannikar replied.

"As we've discussed earlier, we are putting a task force to eliminate the base at Socotra."

"CTF 151 and 152,correct?" PM Robinson asked.

"Indeed," POTUS replied, cutting off poor Friedman, who slunk back into the shadows. She wondered how he knew about their operations, but the Brits were good at guesswork. "But we're also planning to move three carrier groups to that area as well."

"Did you say three?" Pannikar raised an eyebrow. "Madame President, Mr. Secretary, isn't that a little bit of overkill?"

"After what Nakanishi did here, I don't think so."

"Point taken. It's good to be prudent," Pannikar replied, but he was nervous about all that firepower in his backyard. What if the Americans got cocky and decided to…no, that was for another time and place.

"Why not just bomb the place to bits and leave it to that?" Robinson pointed out. "I wouldn't take the chance of landing anyone and taking more casualties."

"Whatever technology and information there, we can use and utilize for our benefit," the President stated. "Plus, we don't know what's down there. It could be nothing, it could be a large cache of weapons, or god knows what, and if we want the Nakanishi Group to pay, we need to take everything from them. Everything." She gave a look at the assembled group, who agreed (for the most part) with her.

Okay, time to put the heat on, POTUS thought to herself.

"Prime Minister," she said to Hasegawa, changing the subject. "You know, I had a run in with this…SAILOR unit of yours…you know, the one we talked to yesterday."

Hasegawa patted his forehead with a handkerchief. It was official; creating that unit was a very bad idea. The other two leaders looked at the President curiously.

This was all for show, of course, but putting Hasegawa on the spot would make him more amendable to her demands.

"What about it?" he replied curtly.

"Oh nothing," Hamilton said just as rudely. "Funny thing about them though. They saved my life."

"They did…did they?" Okay, that part he hadn't been told about. He was going to have to get a new Chief of Staff…if he ever survived his term out.

"So you yourself don't even know what they do, even though this unit is under the personal control of the PM office?" Again, a rhetorical question, just for show. She already knew the answer to the question, but to get the attention of the other two leaders, Hasegawa was going to have to suffer a little bit.

"I never said that, Madame President," Hasegawa shot back, obviously taking the bait.

"Of course you didn't. But I'm willing to keep this a secret, for now. The fallout…" she caught herself using that word; it was a bad idea to use nuclear warfare idioms around a nation that had been the subject of that. "I mean, there's already bad PR that's the result in finding out the Japanese government was complacent in letting the Nakanishi Group run amok. Now, compiled if they had a hit team going around the world, doing the wetwork of this corporation…"

"I understand," the PM replied, glumly.

"What are you two going on about?" PM Robinson asked.

"Oh, Prime Minster Hasegawa has a vested interest in the Nakanishi Group," Hamilton stated. "I'm sure we all do, actually. But it seems that Mr. Hasegawa's policies have gone even further than mere campaign donations. Would you care to explain, Prime Minister?"

Hasegawa loosened his tie a little bit. The US President was putting him on the spot, and he was completely unprepared for this situation. He could try to take the easy way out, and cut the transmission. Attributing it to "terrorists", or "solar flares" might work in times of peace, but now the spotlight was on him, and running away was the international sign of guilt.

"Er…yes. In February of this year, I ordered the formation of the Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force, SAILOR-SF, or the short version, SAILOR. This unit was to help uphold Japanese interests both at home, and abroad…"

"Excuse me," Pannikar butted in. "But I thought that under Article 9, the Japanese government would renounce the use of force as a means of settling disputes."

"Ah…well, yes, that's a good question. Er…"

"I'm sure that the Prime Minister had his reasons," POTUS interrupted.

"Yes. Yes, we had our reasons," Hasegawa said, relieved that the President had at least, given him some breathing room. "But I was forced into supporting Nakanishi operations."

"You didn't have to go along with them," PM Robinson pointed out. He knew that wasn't much of an option for many politicians though, including himself.

"I would have lost my post, and my influence…I would have become a disgrace…"

"As opposed to now?" POTUS found that hard to believe.

"…things were different back then, as opposed to now." Hasegawa couldn't believe that the President was ignoring the conversation they had yesterday…then he realized that it was probably part of her plan to get the other two to help out with her…whatever she was doing.

"So you had no previous knowledge of these plans by the Nakanishi Group to attack major world powers?" Pannikar grilled Hasegawa like a piece of Takoyaki.

"Of course I didn't! Otherwise, I would have stopped them!"

"That's enough," Hamilton intervened. "Let's move on." She looked at some notes that her COS was holding up. "Okay, so this SAILOR team has experience in taking down Nakanishi Group security, and is more than willing to take on their former masters."

"Are you willing to trust them this quick?" Robinson asked. "They did save your life, but…"

"I appreciate the concern Sir Robinson, but they've helped me out personally in the last couple of days, and they seem very willing to play ball, so to speak."

"Of course," the UK PM replied, still wary of the President's defense for the SAILOR Team.

"So, they've heard of the situation here in India?" Pannikar said to POTUS.

"Yes, and they have volunteered their services, to take out the remaining leadership as well."

"Again, why should I let this SAILOR team come into India?" Pannikar asked the President. "I can have the NSG come in and wipe out in an instant."  
"If you could, you would have already," the President pointed out. "But there's a problem, isn't there?"

Gotcha, she thought to herself.

"I wouldn't know what this problem that you speak of," the Prime Minister of India replied, somewhat more nervously.

"Your special forces units are more than tied up right now," the President said, looking at some more information that Friedman had given her. At least if he wasn't talking, he could give her some decent information. "It seems like the Naxalites are giving more of a problem that you care to let on."

"The Naxalites are under control," Pannikar retorted.

"With your entire special operations units engaging them at the moment," Friedman said, matter-of-factly. "You have no reserves at the moment, even with that massive military that you have. From what it looks like from our reconnaissance satellites, they've been giving you a significant amount of trouble ever since the terrorist attacks on the 17th."

Chandra realized that he was caught in a bit of a bind. He relented, finally beaten down.

"I will allow for this SAILOR Team to help resolve the siege currently ongoing in Bangalore…"

Both Hasegawa and POTUS braced for the "but" part.

"But…I need something from you, Madame President."

Hasegawa sighed in relief.

"Don't think I haven't forgotten about you, Prime Minister of Japan." Pannikar refused to even call him by his name now; that's how upset he was at him.

"And what would that be?" Hamilton smiled.

"I need the people responsible for the Bhopal Disaster, and a civil suit filed on the behalf of the people who suffered during that tragedy."

The President blinked, along with Hasegawa. Robinson knew what Pannikar was going on about, but elected to remain silent on this one. No need to get involved in that old affair.

"Um…" Now it was time for the President to be confused. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know, Bhopal?!" Pannikar replied, his voice become louder. "The worst industrial disaster in history! A half a million people injured, eleven thousand killed, and the perpetrators get away with it!"

He pointed his finger at President Hamliton. "Extradite the CEO of the company during that time, along with people responsible for the cover up. Only then will I allow this SAILOR team in operate freely in this country."

Hamilton was extremely confused at this point. To Pannikar, Bhopal was a huge event, a black mark on India's history, up there with the Emergency, the Partition of India, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

To the President, it was probably a Sunday. Or Saturday. Most definitely not a Tuesday though.

The COS was furiously tapping away on his tablet, finding information about this obscure event. He flipped it around and showed who the company belonged to, and the CEO at the time.

"Uh, Mr. Pannikar," she replied, narrowing her eyes and trying to dodge the subject. "I'm not responsible for the SAILOR team, Mr. Hasegawa is."

"That still doesn't mean that you had some hand in all of this," Pannikar shot back. "As I recall, you're the nation that's overrun with corporate influence, and this latest incident only proves your compliancy."

"Look, Mr. Pannikar, I'm sure that we can work something out…" Hamilton would have pointed out all the things that were wrong in India, like the corruption or the caste system, but she needed his help.

"No," Pannikar said. "If you want me to keep these details under wraps, then it's only fair that you give me something back."

Hamliton's COS finally got all the information about the disaster together and flipped his tablet computer to face the President. Like Pannikar had stated earlier, it had been one of the worst industrial disasters, up there with Chernobyl, Love Canal, and Minamata…but this one took the cake. Almost thirty years later, people were still demanding justice. People like Pannikar, who had spent most of his life trying to keep the excesses of the big corporations out of his country, and demanded that justice be served.

"Uh…Mr. Pannikar, this might be extremely difficult," she said, looking over the information that the COS had given her. Considering all the factors involved and time passed since the event, it would be bad for all sides involved to say the least.

"That won't be enough. I will accept nothing less."

POTUS and PM Hasegawa could see that this was going nowhere fast. But they needed the support of India if they were to soften up the Nakanishi Group.

"We could let you have…well, whatever they have in that facility in Bangalore," Hasegawa said meekly to Pannikar.

"You mean, technology, funds, and their remaining accoutrements? I know that…we don't need your permission to do that, Prime Minister of Japan."

POTUS gave into one of Pannikar's demands. "We'll file a civil lawsuit on behalf of the people afflicted by the disaster, and that we'll force this issue back out into the open. However, the people you want are well connected, and it would take another ten years for anything to get done. So, take it or leave it, Mr. Pannikar."

Her forceful attitude got the point across; she was not negotiating any further.

"I think that will be enough…for now," he said slowly, crossing his arms. "I will allow the SAILOR team to have access to our country and to deal with the threat that the Nakanishi Group has to our nation. As for you, Mr. Prime Minister of Japan…"

Hasegawa gulped.

"I will have to discuss reparations with you at a later date. That is, if you're still in power by the time I get around to it."

"Yes…" was all that Hasegawa could get out.

"Robinson, you've been quite quiet through all of this," the President said to the UK PM. "What do you think?"

"This SAILOR team that Mr. Hasegawa set up…?" he asked, perplexed. "I'm still confused why this unit is taking charge of all the operations that should be given to other of your Tier One special operations units. I've never heard of this team until now, and even though they did save your life…"

He seemed to be extremely hesitant. The advice from his Cabinet Secretary echoed in his head; "All I'm trying to say is watch your back when it comes to them."

He was talking about the Nakanishi Group, but this SAILOR team was just as shifty, if not more so than the Nakanishi Group.

"Your trust in this unit, in my opinion, is a bit unfounded. I think that there's more to them that you might imagine."

"Well of course, there's always more secrets," the President replied to the UK PM.

"However, I see that you have a valid point to your operation, and I will do my best to support you. I will have my Defence Ministry…well, what's left of it, anyway, provide any assistance that they can."

"Thank you Sir Robinson."

"Is there anything else that we needed to go over?" Hamilton asked the group assembled.

There was a silence from the world leaders, as they pondered that for a second.

"I guess not, Madame President," Pannikar said. He was exhausted from his tirade against the President and the Japanese PM, but it was completely worth it. He had gotten what he wanted, right?

"Nothing that I can think of," Sir Robinson added.

The Japanese Prime Minister simply shook his head. Every time he opened his mouth it seemed, someone else found a reason to criticize him. Not that it wasn't undeserved.

"Well, if that's all, I must end this conversation. I have much to do, and little time to do it. Thank you all," she said, and terminated the conversation.

"Ma'am," the COS told her. "The rest of the G20 is ready to meet with you. After that, it's the NSC and the JCS, then the remaining members of the Armed Services Committee."

She sighed, lamenting the very day she had decided to run for the President of the United States of America.

"Alright, bring them up. Let's get this over with."


	58. Chapter LVI: Magadheera

**Chapter LVI: Magadheera**

**1500hrs, 20 December 2013, Manyata Tech Park, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.**

_"No Indian ever went outside his own country on a warlike expedition, so righteous were they." Anabasis Alexandri_

_"O Warrior! I can't hold myself anymore. Come and unite with Me, O braveheart, an adventurer par excellence, come and rule over me, O my king…" Dheera Dheera Dheera, from Magadheera._

* * *

"I hate flying," Mina griped to Amy. They were just arriving at the tech park where the PMC and Jadeite were besieged. From their perspective, it was still 0430hrs in the United States, but the flight plus the stress of combat was severely taking its toll on the two of them.

"Hey, they gave free wine on the trip," Amy pointed out.

"Only because they had commandeered by the US government to fly us here," Mina retorted. "But it was good wine."

"Madame," the driver said to the two of them. "We're almost here." He lingered his gaze on Mina for a second, before going back to driving. Their choice of clothing wasn't very good; they had to ditch most of their winter clothing back in the US, and all they had were some T-shirts and jeans. No local clothing, and certainly no military type dress.

"Thanks."

"Who are we supposed to meet?" Mina asked Amy.

"Uh…let me check." Amy pulled out her tablet computer from her duffel bag and took a look at the intelligence that had been supplied to them.

"Looks like a Colonel Shanti Krishnan and a Major Elizabeth John, of our good friends, the 108th South Indian Defence Force. Defence, with a 'c', by the way."

"I thought that's how Defence was supposed to be spelled," Mina said.

"That's British English," Amy pointed out. "I learned the American way, with an 'S'. So Defense."

"Whatever. Two nations separated by a common language," Mina commented with a smile. "I wonder if these people will remember us from the last time?"

"Probably…since they kept going on about your blonde hair."

Mina blushed at that.

"Ma'am, we're here," the driver said to the two of them.

"Alright, time to move," Amy said to Mina, opening the car door.

* * *

"Oh look," Prasad said to Shetty, nudging her and making her spill a little bit of her chai. "Remember those guys?"

Shetty turned and saw Amy and Mina getting out of the Mahindra Xylo that had taken them from the airport.

"Blonde and blue…hair…I knew those two weren't tourists!" Shetty exclaimed.

"Right…" Prasad said, pushing her French braid back behind her shoulders and readjusted her beret. Shetty could be so dense sometimes.

"So, how was Tirupathi?" Shetty asked Prasad, changing the subject.

"Like you said…it was crowded. I haven't that many people in one place before." And this was coming from a person who lived in one of the most populated countries in the world.

"My feet hurt after the third hill. I didn't realize how long I had to walk to get to the temple," Prasad sighed.

Shetty nodded at that statement. "Did you donate your hair too?"

Prasad shook her head. "Nah. I like my hair, thank you very much."

"Well, did you donate ANYTHING?" Shetty accused, mockingly.

"Yeah, I gave 500 rupees at the Hundhi."

"At least you did something," Shetty said back, smiling widely. "Glad you liked it."

"Meh." Prasad and Shetty continued to watch the two other girls they had rescued so long ago talk to the other officers before setting down their tea cups and getting back the assault being planned.

* * *

The siege had begun when Central Industrial Security Force units had tried to secure the Nakanishi Asia (India) HQ, and had been beaten back in a five hour shootout resulting in five dead and ten wounded on the CISF side, and an unknown amount on the PMC side.

Mina and Amy walked over to a command post that had been set up by near the IBM India HQ

"Colonel Krishnan?" Amy asked to several officers around a table.

"Well hello again," Krishnan said to her, not even looking up from her maps. "Odd that you should be here, I thought you were just tourists."

"About that…" Mina said, embarrassed about the entire reunion. "As you might have noticed…"

"…you work for the Japanese government," Lt. Iyer pointed out. "The Chief Minister told us."

"Yes, we work for the Japanese government, and we have significant experience taking down, let's say, Chief Operating Officers of the Nakanishi Group."

"And how does one become experienced in such matters?" another darker skinned woman near Col. Krishnan asked. She had short, dark brown hair and looked to be in her mid-thirties. The nametag on her MARPAT uniform said "John."

"Uh…we killed one of them," Amy replied, matter-of-factly.

"Did you now?" Colonel Krishnan said, almost unimpressed. She turned over a map, studying it in detail.

"Yes, we did," Mina shot back, irritated at Krishnan's almost flippant attitude toward them. "Many good people died because of his actions in North America."

"Of course. I never said I didn't believe you, Miss Mina." Mina was surprised that she remembered her name, but it seemed that she was the type of person who once seeing a person, would never forget their name. "Major John, Lieutenant Iyer, please brief these two ladies on the current situation."  
"Right away." John took them over to a building that was several meters away, with Lt. Iyer in tow. Mina gave Amy a look; what were these guys up to anyway? Major John stopped by a support pillar and motioned for Mina and Amy to join her behind the pillar.

"The HQ for the Nakanishi Group is located in the old Cognizant HQ building on the far side of the tech park." She leaned around the corner and pointed it out of Amy and Mina. Several shots snapped past, and the report from a large weapon echoed soon thereafter. Major John stepped back, perfectly aware of the situation she was in.

"As you can tell, there are several snipers with large caliber weapons that have already inflicted several deaths and casualties amongst the police force and our own unit."

Mina would have pulled the hapless Major back and admonished her for exposing herself to enemy fire like that, but that wouldn't have gone down very well.

"How many so far?" Amy asked, just as shocked as Mina.

"I can't say for the police force, but three of our own soldiers have died so far."

"I'm sorry," Amy said.

"Don't be. It was their job, and their sacrifice won't be in vain." John and Lt. Iyer took them back to the command post, which was a scant several meters away from the fighting.

"Was that necessary?" Mina whispered.

"I guess she just wanted us to appreciate the situation," Amy said back. They went back to the table where Colonel Krishnan was looking at the maps, per the usual.

"What's their strength?" Amy asked the officers there. She got out her tablet computer in preparation to take notes.

"From what we can tell," Lt. Iyer said, looking at a memo pad that she carried around, "There's about fifty or so people in the building. There are no civilians in the building, as far as we can tell."

"What type of weapons are they using?" Mina inquired. "It sounds like they were using .50 caliber sniper rifles, maybe Barrett M82s?"

"Correct," Major John said. "It's a mixture of Western and Eastern equipment. Some of the PMC soldiers are using AKMs and AK101s, but others have been seen with SLRs, G3s, and M16s. Other than the sniper rifles, they have a Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun, and several PKMs. They have thrown back several assaults on the facility by police and our units. With your help, perhaps we can finally resolve this conflict."

"What kind of weapons does your unit…?" Mina started to ask, but was interrupted by Amy showing her the information on her tablet computer. Mina looked at it, somewhat confused.

"Why are you using mostly Western made equipment?"

"Ironically," Colonel Krishnan said, finally looking up from her maps. "This PMC was one of several companies that trained us in Western style counter-terrorism and tactics. They supplied us with M16s, MG4s, and other equipment. The INSAS was deemed to be too unreliable, and the other locally produced weapons were of…"

"Dubious quality," Iyer bluntly stated.

"Yes, their quality was in question," Krishnan tactfully rephrased.

"I wouldn't say they were that dubious," another voice came behind them.

"Staff Sergeant Chowdary," Krishnan noted.

"Please, call me Savitha," Chowdary said to Mina and Amy. Her English was perfect, helped along by an American accent, medium height, slender build, and bit fairer skinned than the rest of the officers gathered around. Instead of wearing the MARPAT uniform that most of the other soldiers wore, she wore a khaki slacks and blouse, and a black beret with the emblem of the 108th SIDF on it. She looked more like a Bollywood/Tollywood/Kollywood star than a soldier.

"Yes, Savitha-bhabhi," Lt. Iyer dryly said to her.

"Iyer, please," Krishnan interrupted. "SSgt Chowdary is in charge of our requisitions department. She can provide you with whatever equipment and weapons that you need."

"Sure can," she said with a chirpy voice.

"Moving onto the building itself, it's an average sized office building, with about fifteen floors," Major John and Lt. Iyer unrolled several blueprints of the building onto the table in front of Colonel Krishnan. "As you can see here, there is a very large foyer at the entrance. All fifteen floors are exposed to this foyer, with bridges connecting the second, fifth, tenth, and fourteenth floors. All of these floors can be accessed by elevators."

Amy and Mina studied the map for a second, with Mina looking it over with her HUD, and Amy gathering the data from her onto her tablet computer. "What's this large area here?" Mina asked.

"It's the call center," Major John replied. It's very big, taking up the rest of the space on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors. It's completely open, with skylights and windows looking outward to the rest of the tech park."

"There's no cafeteria?" Amy asked.

"The canteen is located elsewhere on campus," John said.

That would at least cut down on the big area that they would have to fight in, Amy thought. "Any hostages?"

"Not that we can determine," Lt. Iyer replied. "If there were…then it would be highly unlikely that they would be alive."

"Anyway, now that you've seen the situation here, do you have a plan of action?" Colonel Krishnan asked inquisitively.

Amy was quickly tapping away on her tablet computer while Mina stared dumbly on. "I don't have much to add," she said, trying to break the awkward silence. The other officers just kept looking on as well, unsure of how to proceed.

"Nice hair," Chowdary finally replied, looking at Mina. "Wish I could have hair like that."

"Ah…err…thanks."

"And how did you get blue hair?" she asked Amy, who had finally finished tapping away at the computer. Everyone shot her a look, but at least she asked the question that everyone wanted to know.

"Long story," Amy tersely answered.

Not that it helped very much.

"Okay, I've come up with a plan that will include the police, your unit, and us." Amy held up her tablet computer up to the rest of the officers.

"We will be infiltrating from the call center, on the east side of the building," she said, pointing to the blueprints on both the table and on her computer. At the same time, the police and your unit will begin their attack from both the entrance to the building,

"Alright, that sounds a bit risky," Colonel Krishnan noted, "But we've unable to penetrate their defenses, though weakened by constant attacks. Perhaps this will be the final one after all."

"We'll probably need two more people to go with us," Mina added.

"Lt. Iyer? What about Sgt. Prasad and Cpl. Shetty?"

"They don't speak English all that well," Iyer replied. "But they're some of the better soldiers that we have."

"Perhaps SSgt. Chowdary could go with them?" John suggested.

"Chowdary doesn't have all that much combat experience," Lt. Iyer stated.

"And you need to be here to coordinate the combat operations," Major John added.

"How do you think that would work out?" Krishnan asked Amy and Mina.

"I think that would probably be for the best," Amy said back. "We can take care of ourselves, and I'm sure that the rest of them can do just fine."

"What about the rest of the 108th, then?" Major John asked.

"How many soldiers do you have?" Amy asked.

"About three platoons, or about 150 soldiers. The police units nearby total about two hundred, from the traffic police, the armed reserve, special branch, and regular patrol units."

"They don't have a SWAT team or anything like that?" Mina asked.

"We are the special response unit," Colonel Krishnan replied, somewhat incredulous that Mina would think that anyone else would take their job.

"Sorry about that," Amy replied. "The 108th will launch a diversionary attack against the front of the building, backed up by the police. I know that the police here aren't very well armed, but if your unit can support them, their older rifles might be able to provide longer range support and keep some of the PMC soldiers pinned down."

"So, let me get this straight," Major John said, taking in Amy's plan. "While we're doing that, you and three of our soldiers will sneak around and do…?"

"We will make our way through the call center and attempt to locate Jadeite. Do you know where he is?"

"Negative, we know for a fact he's in there, but where, we don't know."

"Well, we're just going to have to wing it when it comes to going in there," Amy stated, making note on her tablet computer. "Continuing on after our infiltration, if we manage to eliminate most of the PMC, your unit will move in and secure the building, clearing the different floors unit Jadeite is found and all PMC units neutralized."

"So, that's it then?" Lt. Iyer's eyes narrowed at the plan that was coming together.

"If we make it more complex, the more things might go wrong," Amy replied. "This way, we can successfully utilize our abilities, your manpower and the police's ability to cordon off the area."

"Okay," Colonel Krishnan stated, nodding her approval of the plan. "I'm confident in this operation. We move out in an hour. The meeting point for your team is by those police cars over there, by the interchange."

She pointed to a gaggle of police SUVs that were congregated there. "SSgt Chowdary!"

"Yes Ma'am?"

"Get these soldiers some weapons and equipment," she said. "I'm sorry, but I don't think fighting in T-shirts and jeans is…appropriate."

"Of course," Mina replied. They were escorted by Chowdary and started to walk over to several SUVs parked about a hundred meters away, safely tucked away in a corner.

* * *

"Jadeite, we're not getting help," the PMC commander said to him. "Beryl's abandoned us, and you know it." Several shots snapped overhead, fired from snipers in the IBM buildings across from them. Two of their snipers fired back, their .50 Caliber M82 Barrett rifles booming their reply.

"Goddammit," he hissed.

"We can take as many of them down with us, if you want, but it's going to end up with the same results, just with more bodies."

"Are you suggesting surrender?" Jadeite snapped at the PMC commander.

"No, sir. But as the situation goes…"

"You can surrender all you want," Jadeite shot back. "I'm going out on my terms."

The PMC Commander sighed. Jesus, this guy was something else. "Alright, we're staying. But it's not going to end well."

There were about fifty of the PMC troops remaining, out of a group of a hundred that had started the siege. It was a bad idea, firing at those police officers. It didn't matter if they were poorly trained, poorly equipped, and poorly led. They had managed to push them back, but all that did was buy time for the better trained soldiers to come up and start attacking them. Again, they had pushed those back as well, but at a high price in terms of manpower and ammunition. Most of the Nakanishi PMC people in this region were from the internal security services, such as the FSB, the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the Pakistani ISI and Indian Research and Analysis Wing (they didn't get along well, but the lure of money made previous enemies work together, as the PMC soon found out), and could not hold their own in a balls-to-the-wall assault that they had been going through. They could, of course, trail a target, eliminate him quietly, plan a small ambush, and even hold their own against a platoon or so. But spying and intelligence was a completely different game than actual soldiering.

Jadeite cradled his AKS74U, a compact version of the AK74, against his chest. The stamped metal was cool; he hadn't fired it for a couple of hours at least. His job was to lead, not to shoot at people.

But things had gone downhill so fast, ever since the attacks had begun on the 17th of December. First, the initial assault across India and Asia that was supposed to turn the area into chaos had completely collapsed with the SAILOR team destabilizing their efforts. Then they decided to shoot their way out, thinking that they could get out without too much of a fuss. Then Beryl effectively abandoned them to their fate.

Speaking of Beryl, she had barely made it out of Yamada's house in Japan before the SAILOR team struck their HQ. Radio intercepts from them had tipped them off only minutes before the attack, and she had escaped in a helicopter from Yamada's house. There had been no time to inform the people at the HQ about the SAILOR team; that had been a massive mistake on their part. From there, things had quickly spun out of control. Now here he was, out of options, out of time, and almost out of ammunition.

He would go down with a fight however. Jadeite shuffled over to his laptop computer sitting on a desk (that hadn't been destroyed yet) and pulled up some files. He smiled bitterly, knowing that this was an act of a desperate man, and that he would only resort to such chicanery if he was cornered.

* * *

"Okay, what weapons do you want?" Chowdary asked both of them. She was standing by one of the Toyota Qualises that the 108th SIDF used. Instead of carrying troops however, it was jam-packed full of guns, ammo, and other equipment. Amy noted that everyone stood very well clear of the vehicle; she couldn't blame them, if that thing went up, well…

"We have our sidearms," Mina pointed out.

"What kind?" Chowdary inquired.

"Um, Glock 26s."

"Wow, that's cool," she replied, an impressed look on her face. "Why don't you have the version in .40 S&W though?"

"I…uh…" Mina was slightly taken aback by Chowdary's question. "They just issued the 9mm version to us. But if I were to guess, the 9mm is more common than .40 S&W, a bit more compact, and therefore more concealable."

"Well, with the proliferation of body armor, I would think that .40 S&W would be a better choice, but whatever." Chowdary picked up a thermos nearby and poured a cup of tea. She offered some to Amy and Mina, who refused.

"Anyway, you are not going in there with just sidearms," Chowdary insisted. "I've got battle rifles, assault rifles, submachine guns, you name it, I have it."

"What type of SMGs do you have?" Mina had a nice flashback to the gun shop in Atlanta, with that shop owner. What was his name again…Billy Bob? Whatever.

"Ah…let's see. SMGs, SMGs…here!"

She pulled out a pair of ancient looking Sterling SMGs.

"Um…no thanks," Mina stared. She couldn't think about using those type of guns.

"Haha! Just kidding, you should have seen the look on your face!" She put the Sterlings away and got some more modern MP5ks, MP5 PDWs, and MP5A6s. Some of them just had iron sights, while others had red dot ones.

"Why would you need red dot sights on that MP5k right there?" Amy asked suspiciously.

"Oh, I forgot to take that one off after some cover-ops mission we did awhile back. It really helped out in CQB situation."

"I'll take that MP5 PDW right there," Amy pointed.

"Are you sure? I mean, those guys might have body armor and I don't think that 9mm bullet is going to penetrate that! It'll be like that one shootout they had in Mumbai, and it took a bajillion bullets to take all seven of those gangsters down! What about the battle rifles?! I mean, they pack a punch, and they're a bit difficult to maneuver, but you won't have to deal with body armor all that stuff! "

"Just give me the PDW," Amy said, exasperated.

"Oh. Okay." Chowdary sadly replied, passing the weapon to Amy, who checked it. Chowdary passed her some ammo and magazines as well.

"What about you, blondie?" she said to Mina, regaining her chipper attitude.

Thanks for that, Mina thought to herself. "You had assault rifles right?"

"Uh-huh!" She pulled out some M16A4s. While a good weapon, it was going to be kind of tough to maneuver around in the office building.

"Do you have anything else…?"

"Yeah, I guess. There are some M4s, some AKMs, and some Tavor rifles. I had to ditch some of the carbines back at base to make room for those MG4s over there. Most of the line soldiers use the M16A4 along with the M203 launcher."

"That's all?"

"Well, sorry, I've only got two SUVs to carry them in!"

"What about those battle rifles?"

"Er, I have some SLRs, and some AG3-F1s that we got surplus from the Norwegian government. They've got some rail sights on them, and they're pretty compact for a battle rifle." Chowdary took the smaller battle rifle out; it had a foregrip and a reflex sight it.

"Well, I'll take that one then."

"Very good!"

She handed the battle rifle over to her.

"And about your clothes…here." She handed them some MARPAT camouflage uniforms, two Class III tactical vests, and some helmets.

"Er, got any Class II vests? We move pretty light," Mina said to her. Taking lighter body armor might seem counterintuitive to some people, but most special forces units actually forgo body armor during operations, instead loading up on ammo and other gear that they might need. At least these two SAILOR team members had the option to wear some.

"Ah…sure." She got the vests out and handed them to them.

"How do find room in there?" Mina asked, wondering how the hell everything fit in those SUVs.

"I find room," Chowdary smiled.

"That's really helpful," Amy replied dryly.

"I try. Anyway, you can go change…"

Mina and Amy put their weapons to the side, and took the MARPAT uniforms that Chowdary had given them, and they simply stripped down in front of everyone.

"Guys, guys! You can't do that!" Chowdary panicky yelled, trying to get in front of them and obscure the view. The male officers immediately started staring because of the sight in front of them, and the female officers started staring because that was completely against cultural norms. Actually, that was against a lot of cultural norms in a lot of different places, so at least they had all the bases covered when it came to embarrassing people.

"Oh, it's alright," Mina said, quickly putting on the uniform. "See? No problem at all."

Both of them were dressed in record time, but much to the embarrassment of all the onlookers.

"Right…well, let me get my armor and stuff, and then I can join you for the fight," Chowdary said to the two of them. She grabbed a Tavor TAR-21, a P226, some body armor and a helmet, and put that on over her khaki uniform. "Much better," she said.

"The attack is slated to begin soon," Amy said, looking at her HUD on the tactical eyepiece she had just put on.

"Whoa, what's that thing?" Chowdary blurted out. She had seen it before at the briefing, and was meaning to ask Amy about it.

"Please stop asking questions," Amy groaned, trying to ignore the mile-a-minute conversation that SSgt. Chowdary was having with her.

"But it looks all shiny and future-y, like in that one film, Robot!"

Amy and Mina sighed collectively. Did she mean, "I, Robot," or the Tamil film?

"Chowdary, just stick near us and try not to talk as much," Amy said to her. "Let's walk over to the start-off point by the police cars over there."

Shetty and Prasad at the starting point, near some police cars. They had been standing there ever since Lt. Iyer had pulled them from their squads for a "special mission".

"Oh shit, why is SSgt. Chowdary with us?" Shetty asked Prasad.

"I think that they need her to translate for us," Prasad said, hefting her M16A4 off of the ground and cradling it in her arms.

"That's just great," Shetty complained. "In the middle of battle, we're going to go through a translator to fight properly." She fidgeted with her MG4, toying with the safety until Prasad glared at her to cut that shit out. It was not good form to do that sort of thing.

"Hi you two!" Chowdary yelled cheerfully at the two soldiers there, running ahead of Amy and Mina. Her Telugu left something to be desired, but it wasn't all that bad.

"SSgt. Chowdary," Prasad said, saluting her. "You're joining us on this mission?"  
"Of course," she replied back.

"But I thought you mostly stayed behind and worked with the weapons," Shetty asked. She wondered if she had any more sex with random guys…what was it called? A one night stand? She really didn't get the entire point of that.

"Oh, we're going with those two over there," Chowdary pointed out. Amy and Mina were slowly walking over to them, talking about something. "We'll just follow them and they'll give us orders. It'll all be good."

"You know, those two really make me uncomfortable," Shetty said, glancing at the two of them.

"Why is that? They seem pretty nice," Chowdary fiddled with her helmet straps.

"Well, you don't know the entire story with them we had, right?" Shetty had a faraway look in her eye, which was somewhat unusual, given her more extraverted nature.

Chowdary stopped fiddling with the straps. "What story?"

"Me and Prasad ran into them back in that housing project over there behind the Nakanishi HQ," Shetty said, continuing on.

That perked Chowdary's interest. "Go on…"

"And so, we got into a huge shootout with some goons there, and those two were caught in the crossfire. They claimed that they were just some tourists from America, but as you can see…"

"Hey, we're ready," Amy stated, walking up to them. Chowdary just nodded and continued on with her conversation with Prasad and Shetty, much to Amy's irritation.

"That's really strange," Chowdary said back to them, in Telugu. "Well, there's nothing we can do about it now."

"I just don't like it when I have to deal with those type of shifty people. I mean, like the bankers back home in Zahirabad. Now those were some bad folks."

"Okay, we're ready to go," Amy repeated.

"Sorry, we'll continue this later," Chowdary said to the two of them. "I'm sorry about that, Mina, Amy." They readied their weapons, and got ready for the upcoming fight.

"What do you think they were saying? Can't the HUD translate that?" Mina whispered to Amy as they walked off toward the back of the Nakanishi HQ.

"These things are still in beta," Amy replied. "And if they could translate spoken language in real time, why would we need a translator?" She inserted a magazine from her tactical vest into the MP5PDW and slapped the charging handle down. Mina did the same, putting a magazine into the AG3 and racking the charging handle back.

* * *

At 1630hrs, the diversionary attack began.

"Okay, Sgt. Pillai, Cpl. Thomas, get your squads moving by the sign over there," Chowdary heard over her radio.

"They're starting," Prasad noted.

The five person squad got down on their hands and knees, crawling toward the back of the building. They had some three hundred meters to crawl. Behind the Nakanishi HQ building, there was a half-finished…something or the other. The construction equipment was still up, and some building materials gave plenty of cover from the Nakanishi HQ.

A loud report from a sniper rifle, followed by a chorus of automatic weaponry filled the air as the police and the 108th SIDF started their diversionary attack. Amy could see more and more of the PMC units in the rear of the building start to pull out in order to engage most of the supposed main attack.

"Looks like they're taking the bait," Chowdary noted to Amy and Mina.

"Sure does," Mina replied.

"Hey, what are they saying?" Prasad interrupted.

"They're saying that the plan is working." Chowdary's translation was almost drowned out by the sound of a Browning .50 cal opening up.

"We'd better hurry, ah…Chalo!" Amy said. That movie on cricket kind of helped on the way over…

"Did she just speak in Hindi?" Prasad said to Shetty.

"Let's not get that started again," Shetty groaned. "Last week…"

"You two, be quiet!" Amy hissed. "Honestly, do you people talk this much?!"

"Hey, we're doing our jobs here," Chowdary snapped back.

"Guys, just keep cool," Mina intervened. "We're almost there, and then you can take it out on the enemy. Alright?"

Amy and Chowdary glared at each other for a moment, then resumed their crawling toward the Nakanishi HQ.

* * *

"Sir, they've begun another attack," the PMC commander said to him.

"Well, let's make it a good one then," Jadeite said, readying his AKS74U. He had just finished his composition on the remaining laptop computer, and set it onto its destination.

"Hope this does some damage," he muttered. The PMC commander saw him send whatever information that he had on that computer to what looked like a US government email account, but he couldn't quite be sure about it.

* * *

"The call center is right over there," Chowdary whispered. They were all in position, looking at the hubbub of activity inside. Several of the PMC soldiers ran to and fro, bringing ammunition, reinforcing weak points, and keeping a lookout for intruders.

"Okay, here's the plan. Chowdary, and…you two, cover us as we go in. Once we clear out the call center, we'll motion you over."

Chowdary quickly translated the plan, and the two other soldiers nodded. Amy and Mina checked the scene one last time, and then made a dash for a door that lead to the call center.

"Damn, they can move really fast," Prasad noted to Shetty, looking at the two girls run quickly over to the door.

"Yeah, you're too fat to move that fast," Shetty retorted.

"Oh ha ha, jokes at my expense." Prasad rolled her eyes and kept her M16A4 trained at the building.

Amy and Mina approached the door. Mina tried the handle; it was open.

"Better make sure it's not booby trapped." Mina grabbed the handle ever so slightly, and pushed.

"It's a pull." Amy pointed at the door hinge.

"Thanks for that." Mina pulled ever so slightly, and Amy scanned with HUD for traps.

"Yep, there's a claymore right there. Give me a second." Amy bent down and looked for the wire that would set the APM off. It was connected to the door handle, and the mine proper was sitting on a desk some five meters away.

"Okay…here goes nothing." Amy got out a small Swiss army knife and opened it up to the scissors. She slowly snipped the tripwire, and the wire fell to the floor, the claymore not knowing any better.

"Phew. That could have been really bad," Mina whispered. She looked around the door for any more traps. There were none.

"Let's move." Amy and Mina stacked up and went in, their weapons at the ready. Inside, there were rows and rows of low-walled cubicles, with an observation station on the second floor attached to a walkway. Presumably, it was used by the bosses to oversee their drones…er, workers. Right now however, there were several more soldiers inside of the station, using it for a forward CP.

"You see that?"

"Yeah, I count about seven guys in there. Should have taken that grenade launcher."

"Perhaps not." Amy gingerly picked up the Claymore and slowly turned it around.

"Oh…"

"You might want to get out of the line of fire," Amy said. She continued to turn it around until it faced the CP.

"Ready?"

"Yeah." Mina crotched behind her, ready for the detonation.

"Fire in the hole." Amy tugged on the remaining length of tripwire and the Claymore detonated. The ball-bearings inside flew out, completely blanketing the entire call center, destroying computers, chairs, TV screens, everything that was standing in there, basically. The CP was hit hard, the glass screen shattered into a thousand bits, adding to the carnage. Five of the soldiers went down instantly, while two others barely managed to escape the carnage scrambling to find cover where there was none in the exposed CP.

"Kingfisher Three, intruders in the call center!" one of them shouted into the radio. "Need backup ASAP!" They got back up and started firing down at Amy and Mina.

"Roger Kingfisher Three, Hanuman Five, get down to the call center and repel the assault," the PMC commander ordered.

"Shit, they're probably bringing reinforcements," Amy cursed, ducking behind a cubicle. "Mina, call the other team in here!"

"They look like they're in trouble," Prasad said, looking at the fire team storm into the call center and engage Amy and Mina.

"We'd better help," Chowdary ordered. "Let's go." The three of them got up from their positions and

"Chowdary, we need your help!" Mina screamed in the radio, bullets flying around her.

"We're already on the way!" Chowdary, Prasad and Shetty stacked up on the door and prepared to enter.

"Shetty, you go in first and try to pin down that fire team with the machine gun," Chowdary said.

"Thanks, but I was going to do that already," Shetty mumbled back.

"Well, then do it!"

Shetty went in and opened up with the MG4, blazing away at the fire team that had just entered the call center. The hail of bullets hit one of them and set the rest running for cover. Chowdary and Prasad were in next, and they engaged the two remaining soldiers on the CP, with Prasad firing her M203 and finishing them off, a loud explosion echoing in the call center. The fire team fell back, shooting as they went.

"They're on the run!" Shetty cheered. She fired her machine gun at the retreating soldiers. "Get some!"

"You're not in the Marines," Prasad groaned.

"Thanks for the assist," Amy said to the three of them as they approached their position.

"Not a problem," Chowdary replied, reloading her rifle. "What's next?"

"Maybe we can get something that'll tell where Jadeite is," Mina said, still scanning the area for hostiles. The enemy fire team still hadn't regrouped.

"Snag one of those soldiers over there?" Chowdary pointed to where the fire team had run off.

"If we can pull it off." Amy didn't like that plan, since it might put everyone else at risk for getting shot. Of course, this entire mission consisted of getting shot at, it just increased the risk even more. "What do those two think?" She gestured at Prasad and Shetty.

"Let me ask them." Chowdary translated the plan for the two of them.

"Sounds kind of risky, but if it ends this mission faster, then I'm all for it," Prasad replied.

"Yeah, same with me," Shetty added. Chowdary translated the responses back to Amy, who nodded in approval.

"Okay then, let's go capture a bad guy then."

Around the corner, near the men's bathroom, Hanuman Five was regrouping for their next attack.

"Dammit, they got Santosh!" one of them hissed to the team leader. "That was our machine gunner!" They were reloading their weapons, AKMs and SLRs.

"Calm down," the team leader said back to them. "Okay, are we ready? Let's go get these bastards."

"Yeah, you do that." The team leader turned around to find five guns trained on their position.

"Throw down your weapons and surrender!" Chowdary ordered in Telugu.

"What did she say?"

"Ah…I think they want us to surrender," the Team Leader replied.

"Like hell we will," the other one said, bringing his weapon to bear.

"No, wait!" It was too late for that though. The soldier had already raised his SLR, and the other soldier in the squad did so as well. The team leader, however, did not, and avoided being killed by the hail of gunfire that killed the other two soldiers in an instant.

"Goddammit," Mina muttered. "Always the hard way."

"Okay, keep your fucking hands were I can see them!" Chowdary yelled out, very pissed off.

"Y-y-y-y….yes," the team leader responded, keeping his hands in the air.

"Prasad, Shetty! Take him!" The two ran forward and subdued the man, flexcuffing him and dragging him back to Amy and Mina.

"You speak English?" Amy asked him. He just stared at her, wondering how someone got blue…

"Hey, do you speak English?" Chowdary repeated, just this time in Telugu.

"No, I don't," was the curt reply.

"He doesn't."

"Right, tell him that we just want the location of Jadeite and we'll let him go," Amy said to the Staff Sergeant.

"Hey, uh, what's your name?"

He glared at Chowdary until she poked him in the ribs.

"Vijay."

"Okay, Vijay, this is what we want. Just tell us where that guy…er…Jade…Jade…"

"Jadeite?" the TL said out loud and immediately regretted shooting his mouth off like that.

"Yeah, that's the one. Tell us where he is."

"Look, he's somewhere up on the tenth floor or something like that." The team leader was not going to die over something like this. Hopefully, his friends in the RAW would get him out of jail, and he could go work for somebody else.

"The tenth floor? You sure?" Chowdary poked.

"Yeah, I'm sure. Now let me go!"

"Where on the tenth floor exactly?"

"I don't fucking know, okay?!"

"Uh-huh. Give me a second, will you?" Chowdary stood back up and looked at Amy.

"Well, this guy says that he's on the tenth floor. Where exactly, he doesn't know, but he says the tenth floor."

"Tenth floor it is," Amy said. "You two, toss him in the bathroom and we're out of here."

"Shetty, Prasad…"

"Yeah yeah, I get it." Shetty and Prasad groaned, but there wasn't much they could do about their predicament. They hefted the EPW up and lead him into the bathroom, flexcuffed him some more to a stall, and left him there.

"We're back," Shetty said to the rest of them.

"Let's get moving then." Amy shouldered her weapon and started for the stairs.

The group of five soldiers snaked their way up some stairs to the second floor, and observed several more PMC soldiers firing at the 108th and the police outside of the building. Mina saw one of them go down, felled by a hail of SLR bullets.

"We should take them out," Chowdary urged.

Amy shook her head. "No, our objective is to get Jadeite. If we run into heavy weaponry, like that .50 cal, then we can take it out. These guys seem like they're on the losing end anyway." Amy saw another soldier went down.

"Fine." The group of soldiers continued up the flight of stairs.

Luckily for them, there were only fifty PMC soldiers left, and that number was dwindling rapidly as the final assault took its toll on them. There was no opposition as they moved up the floors, stopping only to let some soldiers on the seventh floor run past to make a last ditch stand somewhere.

"What's with me and stairs?" Shetty gasped to Prasad.

"And you said I was the fat one," Prasad shot back. Shetty just rolled her eyes and kept moving up with them toward their target.

A loud thumping from a large caliber weapon interrupted their easy ascent up the building.

"Sounds like that .50 cal is on floor above us," Amy noted. "We should take it out." Quickly moving, the five of them moved up the stairs to the eighth floor.

"Hold up." Amy raised her hand, stopping the squad. She peeked around the corner, and saw a fortified position built into an office area. "Five hostiles. One .50 cal machine gun. Shetty, Prasad, on point and pin them down. We'll move in for the kill." Chowdary quickly whispered the translated orders.

Prasad and Shetty moved up, her machine gun and the M203 ready to roll.

"Okay, light em' up." Amy tapped Prasad on the shoulder, and nodded for her to start.

Prasad launched a grenade in the direction of the machine gun, arcing it over the sandbagged shelter and exploding it right on top of the machine gun. The crew never knew what hit them.

At the same time, Shetty opened up with her MG4 and killed one of the remaining soldiers, while the other one ducked behind a support column, trying to avoid the onslaught of fire.

"Grenade out!" Mina yelled. She took a frag grenade from her vest, unpinned it, and tossed it in the direction of the soldier. It detonated a second later, tossing the soldier aside and eliminating the threat completely.

"Back to the stairs, guys."

Amy and Mina turned to go back up the winding flight of stairs, with Chowdary giving a thumbs up to Prasad and Shetty.

"No wonder those idiots at the housing complex were having trouble," Prasad mentioned to Shetty as they started back up the stairs.

"You're telling me."

"Keep it moving!" Amy was very tense, and was not going to let these motormouths get in the way.

"Fine, fine." Both of them ran a bit more quickly to catch up with her.

* * *

As the five of them got up to the tenth floor, they were sent scattering by a long burst of gunfire that rippled around them.

"Shit!" Mina said, diving behind a support pillar. "There's a machine gun across that bridge there!"

Amy cursed her luck. They were on the opposite side of the building, and the only way to get across to the tenth floor without going back down was to cross that bridge…which had an PKM firing across it. There was no way they'd get across that without being killed first. The bridge itself was fairly sturdy, about five meters across and thirty long, but using explosives would more than certainly damage the structural integrity, and that could lead to a complete cascade failure, bringing down all the bridges below them.

"You two!" Amy still hadn't learned Prasad and Shetty's names. "Lay down covering fire!"

"What?!" Prasad yelled back, in Kannada.

"She said to lay down suppressing fire!" Chowdary screamed over the din of gunfire. There were at least five or six more soldiers on the other side that were firing their weapons, in addition to the machine gunner.

Amy was about to add, "Don't use the grenades," when Prasad launched a 40mm grenade across to the other side, detonating it behind the bridge but too close for comfort. At least that spooked the machine gunner, who picked up his weapon and shifted to another firing position. Amy, still a little bit irritated, saw the opportunity to get across however.

"Cover us! Mina, on me! Move!"

Mina and Amy charged across the bridge, firing their weapons from the hip and taking up cover near some overturned furniture. It looked like they were on the verge of wiping out all the resistance on the floor.

"Look, it's Jadeite!" Mina pointed to a figure darting in a cubical farm about fifteen meters away.

"Guys, move up!" Amy shouted to Chowdary. The three soldiers ran across the bridge and formed up on Amy and Mina.

"On three, we into that office space there. Okay?"

Chowdary, Shetty and Prasad nodded.

"One…two…three!"

* * *

"Jadeite, they're right on top of us!" the PMC commander yelled, right before he was hit with several bullets. He flopped down at his feet, dead.

Jadeite saw the figures of several soldiers approaching, all in MARPAT uniforms except for one of them, who was dressed in a khaki uniform. He ducked down behind a desk, hoping that he could at least get the drop on one of them.

"Jadeite, come out and surrender!" one of them yelled out. "Beryl's abandoned you, and you know it!"

Yeah, tell me something that I don't know already. Well, time to go out with a bang at least.

Jadeite slowly leaned around the cubicle that he was hiding behind and targeted the group.

"There he is!" Prasad yelled out. Six guns trained on his position.

Jadeite shot first. He didn't even aim, he just held down the trigger and swept back and forth, hoping to take down as many of them as he possibly could.

"Ow! Fuck!" Chowdary slipped and fell, a bullet passing through her calf.

The gun clicked empty as he ran out of bullets.

Well, this is the end. Some place to die in.

He died in a barrage of bullets that riddled his body, sending him to the ground in a bloody, disfigured heap of flesh and bone. There was no more head anymore, just a bloody pulp, and most of his extremities had been ripped off as well.

"Ow…ow, fuck." Chowdary was on the ground, holding her leg and trying to apply pressure to the wound.

"Hold on! Mina, check him!" Amy applied a bandage from a small first aid kit to the wound, which was indeed painful, but not life threatening.

Amy then pulled out a small tube.

"What's that stuff?" Chowdary winced.

"It'll heal you right up," was the response.

"What's that supposed…" Chowdary was amazed to see the gel immediately go to work, healing her wound up and repairing the damaged muscle. Amy then applied some more to the other side of the wound, where the bullet had come out.

"That's better," she said, standing up and offering her hand to Chowdary. She took it, and stood up, albeit gingerly and a bit stiffly. The wound was not exactly healed all the way, and seeking more professional medical attention was highly advised.

"Wow…just…wow."

"How does it feel?" Amy asked. She had seen the stuff work on Mina, but she didn't know how it would work on other people. They had been exposed to the fluid…gel…stuff for a while, but Chowdary hadn't.

"I'm a bit stiff, but that's…where did you get that stuff?"

"Courtesy of our friends here," Amy said. "Mina, how's Jadeite?"

Mina shook her head. "He's very dead. Looks like his face got shot to bits as well."

"Heh, serves him right. Glad he's dead." Amy got up from treating Chowdary and walked over to her position. "Huh. He was working on something…" She noted a laptop computer nearby, but in the firefight, it had been completely destroyed. Even the best software recovery programs wouldn't be able to recover data if the physical medium had been ruined. She sighed, lamenting the lost opportunity. Oh well.

"Hey, you two." Amy waved to the two soldiers for them to come over to her. They had been poking at the body of Jadeite and making faces at the deceased. "What are your names?"  
"Ninna hesaru yenu?" Chowdary translated.

"Neela Prasad."

"Shruthi Shetty."

"You…you are Amy," Prasad slowly said. "And you…you are Mina."

Mina was certainly impressed by her attempt to at least try to communicate with her. "Yes, how did you remember?"

"I pick up from you, ah…er…speak..." Prasad's English was still bad, but at least she could get some of the point across.

Mina nodded in her approval of Prasad trying to speak English. "Well, thanks for helping us out. What's 'thanks' in…"

Chowdary didn't bother trying to explain the complexities of South Indian languages. "Just say, 'Dhanyawaadagalu'."

"What…?" That was certainly very confusing.

"Dan-ya-wa-da-ga-lu," Chowdary spelled out.

"Dan-ya-wa-da-ga-lu." Amy and Mina both bowed politely to them.

Prasad and Shetty both gave a toothy smile in appreciation.

* * *

"Nice work out there," Colonel Krishnan was standing outside the Nakanishi HQ, along with the five of them. The Nakanishi HQ (Asia-India) building had mostly remained intact, although there was some smoke billowing out lazily from the eighth and tenth floors, and most of the windows had been shattered in the gunfight. "How is your leg, SSgt. Chowdary?"

She nodded cheerfully, although she winced in pain as she leaned against a police SUV. "It's better, with this…healing…thingy that they had in there. I'm still going to have a doctor look at it."

"That's good." She turned her attention to Amy and Mina. "Well, thanks for helping us out with that situation. I'm sure we could have done it ourselves, but it would have certainly involved more deaths on our side."

"How many did we capture?"

"About twenty five of them. The rest were killed off, and we're going to spend a good while here just collecting information from the files and databases here."

"Did you suffer any more causalities?" Amy asked.

"Three dead, ten wounded. I'm not quite sure about the police."

"I see," Amy replied.

"What do you think is going to happen to all their employees?" Chowdary asked. "I know some people that work or worked for them, and they're not responsible for all of this…"

"More than likely, they're going to be laid off, but I think that most people will be amendable…" Krishnan wished that she was speaking the truth on that one, but experience told her that when once associated with a bad thing, people would not be as forgiving as they should be. She knew that many a Nakanishi employee, having nothing to do with this series of unfortunate events, would be unfairly blamed. And there was nothing she could do about it.

"Um…" Poor Prasad and Shetty had been completely left out of the loop, since they didn't speak much English. It sounded more like gibberish, with a couple of familiar words occurring only every once in a while.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Prasad, Shetty." Colonel Krishnan quickly switched to Kannada to help them out. "We were just saying…" She quickly went over the conversation again.

"Yeah…thanks," Prasad said, quickly regretting her decision to butt into the conversation. Most of that stuff went completely over her head.

"Well, I think we can certainly get some more funding after this little incident," Krishnan said. "Pay raises and bonuses might be up and coming for everyone, I think."

That got Shetty, Prasad and Chowdary smiling.

"What are you smiling about?" Amy asked.

"We might get a raise," Chowdary said back.

"Hmm."

"Well, it was nice working with you all, but we have a lot more work to get done," Mina announced to them. "Is there any way that we can get back to the airport?"

"I will be more than willing to provide some more transport back to the airport," Krishnan nodded to her. She motioned to Major John and Lt. Iyer and yelled something out to them, presumably to get a driver and a car. "You can return your weapons to Chowdary."

"Sure thing."

"And please…"

Amy and Mina looked at her.

"Change somewhere else."

* * *

The President of the United States of America was beyond exhausted when she finally sat down to her desk in Cheyenne Mountain to answer some emails. She had been getting thousands by the hour, and while the staff and the spam filters had been good about weeding them out, some strange ones still managed to get through. More of the time, they were random death threats, conspiracy theories, and the occasional lost email in cyberspace. The one she got today wasn't any different. All it read was "Madame President: Please Read." She noted it was from a Nakanishi email account and wanted nothing to do with that already. If she needed to know something about the developing situation around Socotra, she would ask for help. Otherwise, it might be a trap or something like that. Either way, in her tiredness and irritation, she marked it as read, and moved on, not even bothering to delete it. There wasn't even time for that before her COS announced to her that she had yet another round of meetings. She groaned, and put the computer to sleep, getting up from her desk and walking out of the office.


	59. Chapter LVII: Va, Pensiero

**Chapter LVII: Va, Pensiero. **

**0600hrs, 20 December 2013, Near Via San Gallo, Florence, Italy**

_"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy." Psalm 137: 1-3._

_"I know I only killed four people this month...but last month I killed at least ten!" Henrietta, Gunslinger Girl._

* * *

Lita, Raye, and Serena walked down the Via San Gallo, a sleepy cobblestone street in the center of Florence, Italy. They had been dropped off from the airport by a couple of men in a van, who had spoken no words to them on the drive there. Serena figured that they were with intelligence or something like that.

"Is that the Hotel Ricasoli?" Raye asked Serena, trying to get a fix on her HUD. They were all wearing fashionable glasses, which didn't really suit Raye all that much. Jeans, long sleeved shirts and some ill-fitting winter coats were the order of the day, the latter provided by the suspicious men in the van.

"Yeah, that's the place," Serena yawned, still sleepy by the trip they took over here. Amy and Mina were used to travelling all over the place while the other three had mostly stayed in Asia to do the dirty work of Nakanishi. Their kill count was much higher, but Amy and Mina had more experience in these types of covert operations than they did.

They continued to walk down San Gallo, past the hotel and toward a T-intersection. On their right was the hotel, with an entrance for cars and such just a couple of meters away. On their left was an alcohol store, a restaurant, and a fax/copier store. All of them were closed at the moment, shutters covering the windows to prevent the occasional drunk or enterprising graffiti artists from making their mark on the more valuable windowpanes.

Graffiti, like wine, good food and women, was Italy's pastime. Ever since the Roman Republic, and probably before then, ordinary people had scribbled their thoughts and opinions on building walls, explaining to the world why they thought this way and why it should be changed. Some of it was frivolous, like a declaration of love…others, it was way more political. They were still painting over anti-Berlusconi graffiti.

"That's the café we're supposed to meet," Lita pointed out. The HUD conveniently located the café and gave waypoints until they reached their destination.

"Doesn't look open yet," Serena noted. "We'll just wait here."

"Who are these guys we're supposed to meet?" Lita asked Serena. Luna and Artemis were not available due to the ongoing operations at Yokota Air Base, and plus, these girls had enough experience to handle things on their own. Supposedly.

"Luna said that these guys run a program similar to ours. It's called the…" She dug out her small tablet computer from her purse and unlocked it. "The Social Welfare Agency," she read from the briefing document.

"Doesn't sound very conspicuous," Raye noted. "Unlike our name."

They stayed quiet for a moment, soaking in the cold air that surrounded them. Florence, like many cities at this time, was chilly, and had significantly less tourists around. Serena noted a large church in the distance; on her HUD, it came up as the "Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore."

"That's a nice looking church," Raye said. "Much better than the small chapel they had back at school."

"You never did tell us why you went to Catholic school." Lita picked at her nails, cut short by the constant wear and tear on them. "You told Mina back then, but not us."

"Dad made me," Raye replied, somewhat bitterly. "Wanted me to be like him. Wanted a nice daughter to show off to the media when he made PM. That's all."  
"Really? I've never heard you talk about that," Lita said back. Raye just shrugged.

"Now, it's your turn," Raye smirked, changing the topic abruptly. "Tell me something that I've never heard about you?"

"I wanted to get married and open a flower shop,"

"I already knew that…"

"This year."

"For fucks sake," Raye groaned. "Lita, no one marries at our age anymore. It's like you live in the 90's or something."

Lita rolled her eyes at Raye, and continued on with her explanation. "I was hoping to find something…anything. I wanted to settle down, raise a nice family, with that one special person. Well, after this…"

"Come on, Lita. At least this popped some sense into you." Raye sure seemed against the idea of marriage.

They lapsed into silence for awhile after that, wondering how exactly they were going to readjust to society after all of this was over.

* * *

"Hey…hey!" Serena turned around to see someone waving them over to the small café on the corner near the hotel. She nodded her head in acknowledgement and the three of them walked over to the café.

The person who had called them over, a man in his early thirties with wavy dark brown hair and a toned build, opened the door to the café, inviting them in to the warm place.

Most stores and institutions didn't open this early in the day (unlike in America), and would not do so for at least another three or four hours. Don't ever ask an Italian to wake up early, that's for sure.

Serena walked into the store and was hit by a blast of warm air. The café was a cozy place, with a coffee bar, some tables (all wooden), dim lighting, and free wifi.

"Care for some coffee?" the man said.

"Uh…excuse me?" Serena replied. She had no idea what the man had just said to her.

"Oh…er…do you speak English?" he said again. Serena couldn't place his accent, but she thought it sounded German.

"Yeah…a little bit." Serena did admit, her English was getting better all the time. Lita and Raye were still having trouble though, even though they could understand it, they couldn't read English. Or have a decent conversation.

"Would you care for a cappuccino?" he said.

"Yeah. Guys," she turned to Lita and Raye. "Cappuccino?"

"Sure," was the reply from the two of them.

She nodded to the German guy.

"Okay then. Triela, four cappuccinos."

"You got it."

Serena noticed a woman…no, a girl, with tan skin, blonde hair like hers in two very long ponytails, working behind the espresso machine. She didn't look older than fourteen or fifteen.

She wondered what the child labor laws were like here in Italy…maybe they didn't apply?

"Don't mind Triela," the man said to her, sensing her curiosity about the girl tending bar. "She's a bit like you."  
"A bit like me?" Serena replied, raising an eyebrow. What exactly did these guys know about us?

"I'm Hilshire." He extended his hand out. Serena took his hand and shook it. "We're with the Social Welfare Agency. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you as well, Hilshire. This is Lita and Raye, er, we're with…the Japanese government."

"Hello," both of them said in broken English. They gingerly took his hand, still not used to the fact that some people used physical contact as a greeting and not bowing.

"What are we waiting for?" Serena asked, hesitatingly.

"Well, two more teams are supposed to be coming up from Rome today to help you catch this Zoicite person."

Triela brought over the cappuccinos, along with some sugar for added taste. No artificial sweetener here; coffee was not going to be polluted by the contents of those pink, blue, and yellow packets. She just nodded to the rest of them, and went back behind the bar.

"I didn't hear how bad Italy was hit by the recent terrorist attacks," Serena noted. Raye picked up her coffee cup gingerly, sipping the hot liquid. She recoiled with the bitter taste, but it woke her up nonetheless.

"We got off pretty well unscathed," Hilshire replied, taking a sip from the coffee cup. "The Naval base at Naples got hit by some terrorists, and nearby, at Aviano Air Base was attacked as well, but overall things have been pretty quiet for the most part."

"Who's the girl?" Raye asked Serena. Serena translated her question to Hilshire.

"Triela is one of our cyborgs."

"Cyborgs?"

"Yes, they're cyborgs. Mostly flesh and blood actually, but with some, er, adjustments."

"But they're so young!" Serena exclaimed, taking another look at the girl.

"As opposed to you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Serena shot back. "We didn't exactly choose this, for your information."

"Hey, hey, I didn't mean any offense," Hilshire raised his hands in mock defeat. "Just stating what I see."

The bell on the door suddenly rang, and the five of them suddenly looked at who was entering. Two more girls, along with two older men walked into the café. One of them had glasses with a stocky build, the other slightly slimmer with short, brown hair. Amongst the girls, one had short, blonde hair, and the other with long, dark hair. Both were dressed in winter clothes.

"Jose, Marco," Hilshire said, getting up from his chair. "I see you got here faster than expected."

"We drove from Rome pretty fast. It helps that the roads are pretty much clear after those terrorist attacks," the man named "Jose" replied to them, in Italian of course.

"Well, these are the operatives from the Japanese government that have come to assist us in taking down our friends from the Nakanishi group," Hilshire stated. "Serena, this is Jose and Marco. They're in charge of Henrietta and Angelica there." After a round of handshakes, Hilshire chatted with the other handlers.

"How is Angelica doing?"

"She's doing well…as can be expected," Marco replied. "The conditioning process is taking its toll." As the handlers talked, the three girls walked over to the SAILOR team.

"Hello," the short blonde haired girl said to Lita. "What's your name?"

"I don't understand you," Lita replied.

The girl looked puzzled for a second, then tried a different track. "Do you speak German or French? English?"

"I speak a little bit of Latin," Raye replied, in…well, Latin. "And a little bit of English." It was the church Latin, not the one spoken back in Ancient Rome. Latin had always been somewhat vulgar, but two-thousand years' worth of changes and a virtually dying out of the language in modern day use (other than in music and liturgy), had corrupted it enough.

"Oh, that's good," the blonde girl said in an odd mixture of Latin and English. "I'm Henrietta."

"Nice to meet you…Henrietta," Raye replied, slowly and carefully, trying to get her point across. "Who's the other person?"

"I'm Angelica."

"That's a nice name," Lita, replied. Again, she was speaking slowly and carefully, like Raye. It was typical of people from different cultures and languages communicating with each other; at least they could commutate effectively with each other. "I'm Lita. This is Raye."

"What kind of name is Lita?" Henrietta asked.

"Well, my parents were kind of eccentric, so they named me after an abbreviated version of Lightning. Hence, Lita."

"That's…interesting," Angelica said back. "Do you know what my name means?"

Lita thought about it for a second. "Angel…? Right?"

"Yeah, that's what it means," she said back, their conversation becoming more natural and fluid.

"Ow…" Triela held her stomach, and winced in pain. All of them turned to her to see what the problem was.

"You okay there?" Serena asked her. The other girls ignored her for a second though.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just my period, that's all."

"Didn't we have this conversation a couple of months ago?" Henrietta inquired.

"And you reminded me that you don't have those parts anymore, thanks for that," Triela hissed back. The pain went away as soon as it came, and Triela stood back up.

"What was wrong with her?" Raye asked Angelica.

"Oh, it was just her period."

"Just her period, huh?" That sparked a thought in Raye's mind. "Guys…when was the last time we had our periods?"

Serena blinked. "The last time I can remember getting them was…"

"…six months ago," Lita finished. "That was when we started the healing solution treatments, and got our modifications."

"Don't tell me that they made us infertile," Serena complained. That was the last thing that they needed to worry about.

"Maybe they just found the solution to PMS," Lita joked. "Kind of like Viagra. Except, more useful."

"Hey, what are you going on about?" Henrietta asked them. "We can't exactly understand you."

"Oh, okay." Lita quickly summed up their conversation.

"Well, I'm sure that's its nothing," Triela said back to them. "What kind of modifications do you have?"

"Ah…" The three SAILOR members gave each other a look. Telling about the microchips was most definitely out of the picture, but bringing up their prosthetics was going to dredge up bad memories. Triela had already brought up that sore spot though, and there was no reason not to tell them that part. It was more out of curiosity than malicious intent anyway.

"Well, I lost my legs in…uh…an accident," Serena replied, slowly saying out the words in her broken English. She hiked up her jeans just enough to show where the artificial legs were attached to her real ones.

"I lost my left arm in…an accident too," Lita added. She took off her jacket and showed the girls the arm. She popped it off, wincing in pain as she did so, and tossed it to Angelica who looked generally surprised that something like that could be done.

"Whoa!" she said, cradling the arm. "That's pretty cool." Henrietta and Triela took a look at the arm before passing it back to Angelica. She handed the arm back, and Lita put it back on.

"I'm pretty strong already, and with that prosthetic arm, I can do a lot more things in combat, or just mundane use. It's a lot easier to take things out of the oven or handle hot items in the kitchen."

"Wow…" Angelica said, in awe of the older girl. "I wish I was that useful."

What's that supposed to mean? Lita thought to herself. Does that mean she's "defective" in some way?

"What parts of you are modified?" Serena questioned Triela.

"Well…pretty much everything besides our brains and internal organs," Triela replied. "I'm not exactly sure about the general specifics myself. They won't tell us much of that information, but from what I've gleaned from the medical staff and other handlers, that's what I'd guess."

"That's…wow." Serena couldn't imagine being mostly artificial limbs.

"What do you guys do for fun?" Henrietta asked her. "You're from Japan, right? That means you've travelled all over the world and stuff!"

"Well, I wouldn't put it that way," Lita replied, smiling embarrassedly. "We're just trying to make things right again."

"Make…make things right? Did you do something wrong?"

"I wouldn't put it like that," Serena corrected. "It's more like, the world is a messed up place. And it's our job to make things right."

"So you make the bad terrorists go away?" Henrietta seemed truly interested in the concept. "And you travel all over the world to do that kind of stuff?"

"I guess so," Raye said.

* * *

"What do you think of them?" Jose asked Marco. They were standing in a corner, watching Angelica, Triela and Henrietta interact with the older women.

"They're up to par, with our team, but they've had a lot less experience than our girls. But they can keep up."

Marco took another sip of his double espresso. The bitter coffee kept him awake through the tough missions, and they were going to need much caffeine to power through this one.

"Did you hear about the Turin Nuclear plant?" Jose said, changing the topic.

"What about it?"

"They're planning on opening back up. The PM wants more energy independence."

"Jesus," Marco replied. "That's the last thing we need. Especially after Fukushima, and we don't even have that bad of natural disasters here. But that pales in contrast to what could happen."  
"Terrorists?" Jose asked, sipping from his coffee cup.

"Most definitely. The Padinia faction has been relatively quiet, even with this last series of terrorist attacks. I'm surprised that they didn't take this opportunity to inflict some more damage."

"Wonder why that is," Jose replied.

"I dunno." Marco poked at his smart phone before putting it on the table. Not having Patricia around was getting to be a pain, but that was the least of his concerns right now. "But I think security is already tight enough as it is, and the pressure we've been putting on them, we should have them out of business in no time." He took another sip from the coffee, the brownish liquid washing down the lack of sleep.

"I still have a feeling like that goddamned nuclear plant is going to be the death of us all," Jose sighed, putting his coffee cup back onto the saucer. He looked at the girls again. Lita, Raye and Serena seemed to be getting along with the three of the SWA cyborgs. Hell, those three weren't so different from the cyborgs, except they were a bit older and could easily fend for themselves, without a need for handlers or…or any support, for that matter. The intel reports on them had come up blank, besides the fact that they were modified with some prosthetics. They were virtual ghosts in an age where anybody's movement could be tracked and located, with a push of a button, a line of code, or a telephone call.

"Huh…says that they discovered some new element near the Tiber river," Marco absentmindedly commented.

"Are you still looking at that phone?" Jose tried to avoid technological distractions as much as possible, but that was a tall order to follow.

"Sorry, it helps to pass the time. Especially after breaking up with…"

"It's okay."

"Don't they look like a nice bunch of girls." Hilshire had talking on his phone, presumably with someone in Rome (read, Jean), about the situation. "You got the maps and stuff?"

"Right here." Jose pulled out some maps from a briefcase he had brought in, along with more notes about the hotel. "Let's start this then."

"Okay girls," Hilshire called out to the six of them. "Time for the briefing." Everyone complied, shuffling their way over to the table where the three handlers were preparing the briefing.

"Here's the situation," Jose said, unfurling a map of the Hotel Risacoli

"Our sources indicate that Mr. Zoicite is holed up in the hotel here, in the building facing the highway."

"Which room?" Serena got straight to the point.

"Third floor, room 310." Jose circled it on the blueprints and several more rooms around it. "Practically all the rooms on this floor have been taken up by the security detail."

"Weaponry?" Raye asked.

"Mostly Beretta M12s, Sig Sauers 228s, and MP7s. Small, concealable weaponry that packs a punch. Probably wearing Class IIA body armor, disguised as normal street clothes," Rico said, reading off a piece of paper that was probably the intelligence report from Section One.

"What type of guns does your team have?" Hilshire asked the three of them.

"We have our sidearms, Glock 26s, and Lita here is carrying a Glock 30 in a .45 caliber." Serena showed her weapon from her purse.

Marco frowned. "Those might do, but we're probably against twenty hostiles on that floor. We have some submachine guns if you want to use them."

"Henrietta here has a suppressed P90, Triela has a M1897 trench shotgun, and Angelica a Steyr AUG."

"That's a lot of firepower though. Might attract too much attention," Serena pointed out. "Especially after the recent terrorist attacks." Again, there was a little bit of translating involved, but the point got across.

"We're already on that," Marco stated. "There's a cleanup team nearby, they'll handle anything we might cause."

"Well, that's good," Serena said. "We've been both of those at some point."

"Ms. Serena, Ms. Raye, you will go with Henrietta and Triela up the elevators to the third floor, disguising your weapons underneath your clothing and instrument cases. Ms. Lita, you will go with Angelica on the stairwell and prevent any escape from that direction."

"Understood," Lita replied. "What will you three be doing?" she asked suspiciously.

After a second of translating from all parties involved, Jose came up with a response. "We're going to secure the perimeter and ensure that no one gets in or out."

"Civilians?" Lita asked. More translating ensued.

"This is the off season," Marco said. "But what little people are here have been moved out to other hotels, under the guise of an asbestos cleanup operation."

"That's good to hear," Serena exhaled. Too many good people had died in the madness that was Operation TAKE HOLD. She wasn't quite eager to do more killing, but if it meant an end to the conflict, then so be it.

* * *

"Mr. Zoicite," a bodyguard said to him. He was in the hotel room, which was pretty well equipped. This was a four star hotel, with a small kitchenette, equipped bathroom, a TV with the BBC World Service, and a fully stocked mini-bar. It also had a nice view of the plaza in the hotel. He noticed however, the normally busy traffic was gone; more than likely, people were staying home due to the recent terrorist attacks.

"Yes, what is it?" he replied nonchalantly.

"Sir, your private jet is almost ready at the airport. It'll take about an hour to get there."  
"Fine, fine. I'm just glad that we can get going after all of this. Shame that we had to leave the UK HQ behind, but this was the only way."

"Of course, Mr. Zoicite."

Zoicite was still hoping that they could at least get close to Yemen, where they would be able to catch a small submersible vehicle that had been stashed away "somewhere" on the coast. Yemen had been slowly falling apart after a decades long insurgency had crippled most of the government, a 35 percent unemployment rate, sluggish economic growth in general, and a failing infrastructure. Strapped for cash, they willingly accepted a deal to evacuate Socotra of all 50,000 persons, and for a lump sum payment from the Nakanishi Group (200 million dollars), with half of the profits from the oil and gas extraction and production. The kicker was, there was no gas or oil. Their reserves were going to be gone in 2017 anyway, and despite having large natural gas reserves, it wouldn't really matter in the long run. The input cost would be too much for the government to handle. The end result was that for pennies, the Nakanishi Group had gained their own little playground, and Yemenis got the shaft (not that they knew it yet anyway).

Damn, he thought. I might need a stiff one to get me through this day. He went over to the minibar and looked inside. There was some whisky, but maybe he should go with some wine. Yeah, no reason to drink whisky in the land of wine.

He offered a glass of rosso to one of his bodyguards, out of courtesy, knowing that he wouldn't accept do to the nature of his work.

The bodyguard refused, politely nodding his thanks though.

* * *

"So, that's it," Jose finished. "We jump off in ten minutes. Ms. Lita, Raye, Serena, please follow me to car for your weaponry."

As the three of them walked outside the café, Serena noticed that the girls started to unpack their weaponry from varying instrument cases that had already been placed in the store.

"We have some MP7s and Beretta M12s, like the guys inside there," Jose noted sarcastically, popping open the trunk of the car. "I guess great minds think alike."

"Raye," Serena started to say, but she was already reaching for the MP7.

"Done."

"I guess I'll take the Beretta. What about you, Lita?"

"I'll take the Beretta as well." Lita replied. She also checked the Taser in the purse she was carrying.

"Hey, why are you still carrying that thing?!" Raye chastised. "Ditch the Taser, we're not doing non-lethal takedowns."

"That's enough, Raye." Serena grabbed another SMG for Lita. "You can keep the Taser, but I'm not quite sure how it's going to help in this situation."

Lita just sighed and took the SMG from Serena.

"Here's some tactical vests," Jose pulled some out of the backseat.

"Why don't the girls in there get any?" Serena asked Jose, putting on the vest.

"They don't need them," Jose calmly replied. "I've seen Henrietta get hit several times by gunfire, and she's been fine."

"We're not that invincible," Raye griped, putting on the vest and loading it up with magazines. She put the Glock 26 into a holster that was on the front of the vest, specifically meant to hold sidearms like hers. She put her coat back over the vest, disguising it so that no one would get suspicious until the last minute. The others did the same.

"Ready?" he asked.

"I guess so," Serena said back, looking at the

"Girls, time to get moving," Hilshire told the rest of the SWA cyborgs.

"Okay," Triela said, putting her massive shotgun back into her cello case. They all started to walk to the hotel, trying not to attract too much attention to themselves. The six of them entered what was a car entrance, with a guard shack that had no guards. Again, too early for any work, at least, for Italians.

Their nonchalant entrance was quickly ruined by someone looking out of the window.

"Shit," Zoicite said, looking out of the window and seeing several women start walking through the plaza. "You see that?"

"Got it," the bodyguard said, looking over his shoulder. "I'll get the car moving." He reached in his pocket and grabbed a small radio.

"Hey, Alpha team, get the convoy ready, we're moving out."

"Roger," came the response.

The part of the hotel that some of the guests stayed in (like Zoicite) was connected to the hotel proper, but it might have been its own separate entity. Check-in, breakfast, the bar, and other amenities were in a separate building, along with some rooms, but one of the more interesting buildings at the Hotel Risacoli was right across from that. It had shuttered wooden blinds, of all things, to keep the hot sun out during the summer months. The six SAILOR members and SWA cyborgs crossed the plaza slowly, trying not to make too much of scene.

"Did you hear that?" Henrietta said to Triela. Their modifications made it possible for them to pick up faint sounds some distance away.

"Hear what?" Triela answered distractedly.

"Somebody was talking about a car."

"Did we account for their transport?"

"I think so…" Angelica said slowly, not exactly remembering what had been said at the briefing.

"Hilshire," Triela said into her radio. "Do you guys have the garage covered?"

"Yes, we're moving there right now," he replied. He looked at Marco, who was standing next to him on the street corner.

"Shit, I knew we forgot something!" he hissed to Marco. "Where's the garage?"

The sound of gunfire echoed from inside the hotel.

"Too late!" Marco pulled out his Steyr GB from his shoulder holster, with Hilshire doing the same with his new-ish USP. You could take the man out of Germany, but you couldn't take away his German…ness. They charged inside the plaza, and had to dive for cover immediately.

"Get back you three!" Raye screamed at the girls, forgetting for a second that they were trained assassins. Several bodyguards opened fire from the third floor, their SMGs blazing away at the exposed targets on the ground.  
"We'll cover!" Serena yelled back, firing off the entirety of her twenty round magazine from her Beretta M12 in a couple of seconds. She ejected the magazine and shoved a new one in, backing up toward the other end of the plaza.

"Got it!" Henrietta ran to a support pillar and popped open her Amati violin case. The gleaming P90 sat in there, ready to rock and roll. She whipped it out and snapped it to the firing position, depressing the trigger and sweeping the third floor from left the right. The amount of gunfire coming from that floor remained unchanged however.

"Cover, cover, cover!" Lita, Serena and Raye fell back to the other end of the plaza, their SMGs on full auto, firing at anything that moved or remotely moved. Angelica, Triela and Henrietta were laying down covering fire from the entrance to the lobby. The glass sliding door that led there was quickly shattered by a hail of bullets.

"Jose!" Henrietta yelled into her radio. "Things just got bad here!"

"We're trying to get to their cars and prevent their escape, but we're under fire!" Jose had come around the back way near San Gallo and found himself by a ramp leading down toward the garage. He had to back off however, due to a security section firing in his direction. He was not as nearly as skilled or invincible as Henrietta, and despite his military police training, getting into a several –versus-one shootout was not a good situation. He cursed his bad luck, and snapped off a couple of rounds after turning round a corner.

* * *

"Zoicite, with me," his bodyguard said. "Keep low."

"Thanks for that," he muttered. He figured that standing up in a massive gunfight was a really bad idea. He had a small P232 in a holster, but he wasn't much the fighting type.

Running down the stairs, he and a couple more bodyguards ran out the back of the hotel building and toward the garage. The garage itself was owned by the hotel, and it was located underground, accessible from two entrances; one by the highway, and one near Via San Gallo.

"They're getting away!" Serena yelled to the other girls. Everyone spotted the gaggle of people run from behind the hotel building and toward the ramp on the farther end of the hotel complex, and start to descend below.

"Get em!'" Lita fired off another burst, then the group of six girls charged forward in hot pursuit.

* * *

"They're in the cars!" Jose pointed his Beretta 92 at one of the SUVs, a Mercedes GLK. He fired several rounds to no effect. "All units, be advised, they are armored!" He saw the security detail pile into some saloon cars, and Zoicite into the SUV.

* * *

"Go, go, go!" Zoicite screamed at the driver. The driver put the car in gear and sped toward the entrance to the highway, only to be blocked off by the rest of the SAILOR team and the SWA cyborgs blazing away from the top of the ramp.

"We're going to have to take San Gallo!" the driver yelled at Zoicite.

"Just get us out of here!"

Zoicite's SUV powered forward, absorbing fire from Jose's weapon. Marco and Hilshire joined him, but it was useless. They dived out of the way and the convoy of the SUV and two cars zipped past, screeching down Via San Gallo.

"Jose!" Henrietta sprinted to her handler. The rest of the team was hot on her heels, adrenaline pumping after that intense firefight.

"I'm fine! Everyone, get into the cars!" Jose and Marco picked themselves up and immediately started running toward their cars parked on the side of the road, near the café.

"Are the Carabinieri blocking off the routes toward the highway?" Marco asked Jose as they leapt into the car. Thank god for keyless entry systems. Jose hit the "on" button and accelerated the car, barely leaving time for Henrietta, Angelica and Lita to jump into the back with them.

"Yeah!" was the delayed response. Jose swerved the Alfa Romeo 159, trying to dodge the bullets being fired from the other two Alfas, with the GLK in the lead. But it was kind of hard to maneuver in the tight Italian streets, and their car was riddled with bullets.

"You guys back there, get ready to engage." Jose flinched as a bullet snapped by. "Zoicite is the one in the SUV, that Mercedes GLK. Get those bastards!"

Hilshire was in another car, a Fiat Linea, along with Triela, Serena in the backseat and Raye up front. "Get ready to engage."

"Yes sir." Triela shoved several more slug shells into her shotgun, and rolled down the window. Serena did the same, but poor Raye couldn't shoot without getting in someone's way. Unless…

"Thanks for the idea, Serena." She did remember what had happened when the windshield went out on that Bugatti Veyron. Now that was a car…

"Sorry about this, er, Hilshire." She raised her MP7 and fired out the window.

"Damn!" Hilshire hissed, but they need to do what they needed to do in order to get these bastards. The windshield was easily shattered in a few short burst from the armor piercing 4.6mm rounds. Raye leaned back in her seat, and kicked the windshield out. Quickly sitting back up, she aimed her fire at the closest enemy Alfa, which was weaving in front of their own, friendly Alfa.

"This is confusing!" she spat, trying to get a bead on the car. The only reason she knew it was theirs is that Henrietta, Angelica and Marco kept popping out of the car to fire at the others.

"Come on!" Henrietta leaned out and fired a long burst from her P90. The bullets ripped through the Alfa on the right, and the driver lost control. He plowed right into a pizza parlor. Whoever was going to be opening shop today, was going to be in for a very nasty shock.

* * *

"Goddammit, we just lost one of the escorts!" the driver of the SUV screamed to Zoicite.

"Keep driving, keep driving! If we stop, we're dead!" Time to do some hands on work. He rolled down his own window and leaned out to fire his pistol. It was more of a gesture of defiance than a means to get the pursuing cars off of them.

"Sir, cut that shit out!" His bodyguard pulled him back from window, but not before a burst of fire rippled near where he had been poking his head out.

* * *

"That's Zoicite right there! Angelica, get him!" Marco yelled at his charge. He leaned back in to reload his weapon.

"I'm on it!" Angelica popped out the left side and fired her AUG at the SUV. But halfway through a long burst, the gun jammed.

"I'm jammed!" She leaned back in and frantically pulled the handle on the left side of the gun up and down, to no avail.

"Switch!" Lita yelled at her. Although Angelica couldn't really understand her, she got the message nonetheless. Angelica quickly moved over and Lita hopped over her small body, leaning out the window. The Beretta M12 would be little use against that armored SUV, but if she aimed for the tires…

The remaining Alfa weaved into her line of fire, and several more bodyguards fired out of it, their rounds snapping around her.

"Shit!" Lita ducked back in, and saw that Angelica was still having problems with her AUG.

"Here," she said to her, putting the M12 on her lap. "Give me it."

Angelica gave her the weapon, and Lita saw immediately what was the problem. A round had gotten jammed in the chamber, and the charging handle was stuck tight. Using her left arm, Lita pointed the gun outside of the window and racked the handle back as hard as she could, snapping the jammed round out of the chamber and set it flying. The next round was pushed up from the magazine, and Lita chambered the round by slapping the handle back down.

"Good to go!" She handed the rifle back to her, and scooted back over to the middle seat, while Angelica moved back into her original position.

"Jesus, so fucking useless," Marco muttered under his breath. He fired off some more rounds.

"Jose, pull back and let us deal with the SUV," Hilshire said on the radio, noting the difficulty that they were having in taking down the SUV. "I think Triela can put some slugs in there and get that vehicle to stop."

"Give us a second to deal with the other Alfa and we'll let you pass," Jose said over the radio. "Henrietta, Angelica, try to get that Alfa out of the way!"

Henrietta reloaded her weapon, snapping the 50 round magazine into place on top of the P90, and along with Angelica, concentrated their fire on the Alfa. The driver of the Alfa weaved back and forth, but the combination of eighty or so high powered rounds riddling the car proved to be too much. The driver lost control, and spun out into a wall, their car smoldering.

* * *

In the Piazza del Duomo, a BBC World News crew had just finished setting up for a shoot of the cathedrals located in that particular square. Aviano Air Base had denied entrance to the majority of news crews, and there had been nothing in particular for the BBC team to film. In order to make the trip not go to waste, they had been ordered to shoot some stock footage for the news countdown that played between broadcasts (a common joke was that the music that the countdown was set to was that it was out of an apocalyptic rave or something).

"Jesus, it's cold out here," the cameraman complained. It was kinda cold, but the beautiful view of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and of the Battistero di San Giovanni completely made up for it. They looked absolutely stunning in the rising sun's rays.

"Hey, we're near a church," the reporter chastised. "Watch your language."

Suddenly, in the distance, the two of them heard a massive crescendo of gunfire. That certainly got their attention, and not wanting to miss a good story, they sprang into action.

"Hey, hey, get the camera ready, and get that live feed up!" Their van nearby had all of that stuff, and the technicians inside quickly fired up the satellite dish for transmitting back to the BBC HQ. The reporter quickly dialed her mobile to her producer. The gunfire was getting closer, and the reporter sensed a good news story coming their way.

* * *

With the other Alfa out of the way, the SUV soldiered on, with shotgun slugs and SMG rounds flying past.

"Come on!" Zoicite hissed to himself. It was just him, the driver, and three other bodyguards now. They had to make it. Otherwise, he'd never see Kunzite again.

"We'll cut through the plaza and try to double back to the highway!" the driver yelled at him, doing her best to try to avoid the hail of gunfire from behind them.

"Just get us out of here," he commanded.

In the pursuit vehicles, Hilshire noticed that they were getting very close to the Duomo up ahead.

"There's the plaza up ahead!"

"What?" Serena asked. He had said it in Italian.

"The plaza, it's up ahead!" Hilshire repeated in English. "They might be able to get away!"

"We can't let that happen!" she replied.

Triela ducked back inside the car, her shotgun empty. "I'm not doing jack against the SUV!"

"In the glove compartment, there's some steel slugs! Those should do the trick!" Hilshire pointed toward the compartment. Raye, getting his point, opened it up. In there, a box of five steel slugs, just for this sort of situation. She took them out and handed them back to Triela.

"Keep them busy!" she yelled out.

"Got it!" Serena and Raye leaned out their respective windows and fired at will, keeping the bodyguards from firing back. The driver was really good, managing to make that SUV a hard enough target in the small Italian streets. Most of their rounds went wild, shattering storefronts, breaking car windows, and destroying merchandise.

"Almost at the plaza!" Hilshire yelled at Triela. He could see the Duomo rapidly approaching, and to his right, another cathedral by the name of Basilica di San Lorenzo. The driver would have made a right here, except for the fact there was a long line of stalls set up for the shopping season, and a couple of Carabinieri cars blocking off the entrance, finally getting the hint that there was something going on.

"I'm loaded!" She finished loading the last of the slugs into her shotgun, and leaned out the window. She waited patiently, waiting for the SUV to come back into her sights again. It weaved, once, twice...and on the third time that the driver tried to evade, Triela pulled the trigger on her M1897 shotgun, sending the slug down the smoothbore barrel. The slug zipped through the air and buried itself into the right rear tire, shredding it immediately and causing the driver to lose control.

* * *

"Hold on!" the driver yelled to the occupants, but it was too late. The SUV spun out of control as the entered the plaza, and about halfway to the Battistero di San Giovanni, it turned onto its side, the metal screeching against the cobblestones that covered the plaza.

"Did you get that?!" the reporter exclaimed to the cameraman. He was already on it, the camera following the SUV as it slid all away across the plaza and right next to the Battistero di San Giovanni.

"Zoicite?!" The bodyguard made sure that Zoicite was okay.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Dammit." He was lying on his side, with his door facing the ground. The exit was just up there. Zocicite took a look at the driver; she was dead.

"Just a moment." The bodyguard shoved the door open and hopped out.

"Come on! They're getting close." Zoicite dragged himself out, along with the other two bodyguards who had crawled out the back door.

"Are you getting this?"

"Yes, I'm on it!" the cameraman was completely engrossed in watching the people crawl out of the SUV that he failed to see the other cars pull up. The reporter had to yell at him to move to get a better angle when someone started shouting to the people in the SUV.

"They're right there!" Jose pointed to the four people huddled against the turned over SUV. "Don't fire, take them alive if we can." Eight weapons trained downrange on the SUV as Hilshire grabbed a megaphone to get the bad guys to surrender.

"Zoicite!" Hilshire yelled out in English. "Come out with your hands above your head. It's time to end this bloodshed."

"Easy enough for you to say," Zoicite muttered underneath his breath. He noted that there was enough distance from the crashed SUV to the Duomo, and then they could possibly lose their pursuers in the narrow alleys of Florence. "Hey, while they're busy talking," he said to his bodyguard, "Let's move from here to the Duomo, and then give them the slip in those alleys over there."

"Sounds good. On three."

"Last chance Zoicite!" Hilshire yelled over the megaphone.

"Or not. Go!"

"They're running!" Triela yelled out. Everyone opened fired at the Zoicite and his bodyguards. A hail of bullets snapped through the air, headed straight for the cluster of people.

One bodyguard was cut in half by the slug shells that Triela was pumping out, slamming back the pump-action on her shotgun and firing off round after round into the bodyguard. The other two were brought down the combined gunfire of Angelica, Henrietta, Jose and Marco, a multitude of bullet calibers felling the man.

"There's Zoicite!" Angelica pointed out, ejecting the spent magazine from her weapon.

He had hesitated for a second after seeing all of his guards go down, but there was a slight lull in the firing, and he went for it.

Serena, Lita, and Raye had just finished reloading and trained their weapons on the Nakanishi COO. Their SMGs spat out death.

Zoicite felt several hot…things hit him. He felt no pain, but he staggered. More hot lead riddled his body, and now he felt the pain.

"Kunzite…" Now he would never see his lover again. Nice job, breaking it, Zoicite, he cursed to himself, as his lifeblood spilled out onto the ancient cobblestones.

"Are you getting this?!" the BBC reporter exclaimed to the cameraman. Goddamn, this was some time to be a news reporter!

"Yeah, yeah!" he shouted back. The gunfire had temporarily deafened him. "That was some awesome shit!"

"Focus on the assault team over there!" The cameraman swung the camera over to the SWA and the SAILOR team, who were now running up to inspect the damage.

"Hey!" A Carabinieri officer ran up to them and placed his hand over the camera lens. "Get out of here!"

* * *

"That went well," Marco groaned. Section One was going to have its work cut out for them.

"They are going to be so pissed off," Jose agreed, looking at the carnage near the Duomo. "We gotta make sure that the media don't catch any of those…er, SAILOR, people." He jerked his head toward the Carabinieri officer hassling the news crew.

"I'll tell them to do that." Hilshire walked off and started talking to several Section One people who had just pulled up in an Alfa Romeo.

"Angelica did pretty good, despite the circumstances," Jose commented. Marco took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt, before putting them back on.

"Everyone, and I mean everyone, even those SAILOR members did significantly better than her though. Hell, I saw one of them help her load that massive AUG of hers."

"Why don't you give her a smaller one then?"

"It's not that it's a weight or size issue. It's that…she's gone to be gone soon. And there's not a goddamned thing I can do about it."

"Marco!" Angelica came running up to him, after inspecting the damage that they had inflicted on the SUV. "How did I do?"

"You did…good," Marco said, hesitatingly.

"Thanks!" Angelica would take any praise, no matter how faint from her handler. It was those dammed drugs…

"Jose!" Henrietta said to her handler.

"Very good job out there!" Jose praised her, no matter how great or small the feat was.

"Thank you so much!"

Over by the Section One Alfa that had just pulled up, Hilshire was telling the agents in the car what to do.

"What the fuck did you guys do here?!" one of the agents exclaimed in the car, noting the amount of damage. "I mean, we're going to have a bigger task force for this." He reached for his mobile and started dialing numbers.

"Well, get them then," Hilshire ordered.

"Thanks, asshole." The Section One Alfa rolled up its windows.

"What's their problem?" Hilshire turned around to see Triela standing there, her shotgun slung across her back.

"Section One had always given us flak for what we do," he said, scratching his head. "Beats me. Oh, and nice job out there," he added stiffly.

"Thanks," was the equally stiff reply from Triela.

"That looks downright creepy." Raye and the others were sitting near their bullet ridden pursuit cars, looking at the SWA girls interact with their handlers. She had pulled out some cigarettes and had started to smoke one.

"Raye, when did you start smoking?!" Serena asked, in disbelief.

"Give me a break," Raye groaned. She took another pull.

"No, really, we've been through a bajillon missions together and this is the first time you're smoking?!"

"Jesus, fine." Raye tossed the cigarette away.

"Watch your language," Lita joked. "We're near a church."

"Heh." Raye put the remaining pack of cigarettes back in her pocket and looked up at the sky.

"Nice day." The sun was fully up now, and it burned off some of the cloud cover, giving a serene atmosphere to the city.

Serena nodded her agreement. "Sure is."

* * *

On the news in Japan as the newscaster proclaimed the death of yet another Nakanishi company officer, Ms. Tsukino looked at the TV, after praying at the shine they had constructed for Serena. As the news program continued on, something caught her eye.

Was it…it looked like…no, it couldn't be.

For a split second, she swore she could have seen Serena. Alive? That wasn't possible. Her daughter had died six months ago in that terrible explosion.

There she was again! The camera didn't get a clear shot of her face, but she was walking with what seemed to be Lita and Raye, that shrine maiden from the Hikawa temple. But as before, they disappeared, the view obscured by an angry Carabinieri officer shouting at the BBC news crew.

No…it was just her mind playing tricks on her. It had done that several times in the last couple of months, and she had irritated several Americans with their daughters after coming up to them, asking if they were Serena. She didn't want to go see another illusion of her past.

Ms. Tsukino sighed loudly, and went to the kitchen to get dinner ready; her husband would be home soon. Terrorist attacks or not, they still had to make money to live on.


	60. Chapter LVIII: Damn the torpedoes!

**Chapter LVIII: Damn the torpedoes!**

**0430hrs, 21 December 2013, Somewhere off the Coast of Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Over there! Over there! Send the word, send the word, over there! That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the drums rum, tumming everywhere. So prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word to beware. We'll be over, we're coming over, and we won't come back till it's over, over there." Over There, George M. Cohan._

* * *

The USS _Vantage _(DDG-117), an _Arleigh Burke_ Class Guided missile destroyer, barely made it through the Suez Canal before the attacks began. Already, she had taken some small arms fire, shattering a window on the bridge and pocketmarking the sides of the ship.

Commander Glenn Woodsworth, who had just taken command of the ship barely a month ago, was now thrust into a situation that practically no one had expected a week ago. A graduate of the US Navy Academy at Annapolis (Class of 1998), he was near his early forties, with brown hair, a round face and dark skin (it came from his Italian side). They were circling Socotra, doing about twenty knots or so, and keeping at a safe-ish distance of 25 nautical miles out.

"XO," he said to the executive officer, Lt. Commander Robert Louis. "Status on the island." He couldn't get any sleep, and decided to take a peek up on the bridge to make sure everything was alright.

"No activity, same as the day before."

"Great," Woodsworth muttered to himself. All that lost sleep for nothing.

"Why does USNAVCENT want us to check out this POS island? Why aren't we helping out with the cleaning up operations in Suez?" the XO continued. The news from the Suez Canal kept getting worse by the day; first it was the ammunition ships, now an oil tanker was leaking oil everywhere, and was about to catch fire.

"XO, be patient, there's a reason for all of this," Woodsworth said to the XO. At least he had an officer who spoke his mind; those were few and far between, and those who were willing to challenge authority had a difficult time straddling the line between insubordination and sheer genius.

"I sure hope so, because they could use our help up there…"

"Sir!" A voice came from over the intercom near the captain's chair. "Message from USNAVCENT. It's urgent."

Woodsworth went over to the Combat Information Center, where the radio operator was writing something down. The CIC was the brains of the ship (the engines being the soul), and like the name said, all radar, sonar and other information necessary for the ship to fight effectively on the high seas would be channeled to that location in order for the captain of the ship to make the correct decisions about the situation at hand.

"Commander, they want us to move in and to make a full visual inspection of the island."

"Makes sense," he said. "We haven't been able to ascertain anything from radar scans. Anyone else joining us?"

"Yes, two frigates, F931 Louise-Marie, from Belgium and the HDMS Absalon, from Denmark."

"Alright, thank you." Woodsworth walked back to the bridge met his XO there.

"XO, we're going in to get a better look. Ten nautical miles out and close at half speed."

"Very well. Helm!"

The helmsman stood ready to receive new orders.

"Take us in, half speed, 30 degrees to starboard. I don't want to get surprised out there," he noted to the helmsman.  
"Aye aye, half speed at 30 degrees to starboard." The helmsman made the adjustments, and the boat began to move toward its destination.

"When we're ten nautical miles out, run parallel to the island and do a radar sweep of the area," Woodsworth said, checking a map on a digital display.

"Understood," the XO replied.

"We won't be able to see anything until daybreak, but at least we might be able to get something on radar, or if we're lucky, maybe with our night-vision."

"Of course, sir."

It took them about an hour to close with the island. The crew had been woken up by an announcement from the Bridge to get to their posts, and to standby…to standby. This was an unhappy development for the crew's sleep cycle, but such was the nature of the US Navy. The crew mumbled on about being woken, grabbed some coffee from equally exhausted cooks, and hurried off to their action stations.

"USS _Vantage,_ this is the _Louise-Marie_, good morning to you all," a heavily accented voice came over the radio. Woodsworth smiled at that; the Belgian's chirpiness was an impressive feat at this time in the morning. He took the radio near the Captain's chair and responded to the call.

"Morning Louise-Marie, this is the captain of the USS _Vantage_. How are you, over?"

It took a second for the _Louise-Marie_ to respond. "We're doing fine. Uh…we're to your port side, about forty nautical miles away, over."

"They're there," the radar operator confirmed.

"Glad to hear that. Have you picked up anything from the island, over?"

Again, there was a slight pause as the captain on the other checked his instruments and asked the officer of the watch if anything had happened.

"That's a negative, USS _Vantage_. Nothing on radar, and no visual contact, over."

"Affirmative. Anything else, over?"  
"Nothing on our end. What about you, over?" The concern of the Belgians was almost disconcerting, but after patrolling the high seas for a little bit, any human contact was much appreciated.

"Same story."

"Understood. Well, good luck, have a good one. We might put an away team to go ashore and check out the place," the _Louise-Marie_ captain replied.

"Well, we could join you later, no need to go it alone. I'm not quite sure if USNAVCENT would allow the CTF to put people onshore."

"That's affirmative. Thanks, USS _Vantage_. Have a good one, out." The Louise-Marie terminated her conversation with the _Vantage_ and continued on her patrol route.

Woodsworth turned to XO, who was looking at the island with binoculars again. "We'll get permission from USNAVCENT. I'm sure they won't mind; we haven't seen anything that might be dangerous, and I'm sure that they're keen on finding these Nakanishi guys. Plus, I've heard that they want to check the place out so they can land the Marines. That island is quite big and securing a foothold might be beneficial."

"Oooh," the XO replied. "That'll be something else."

* * *

"What's up?" the PMC commander for Socotra said, deep underground in one of the vast caves that had been dug in the last couple of years. These caves put NORAD to shame; instead of one mountain, there was an entire complex of tunnels, mirroring the Japanese defense of Iwo Jima. However, Iwo Jima was only 21 square kilometers, while Socotra was a whopping 3,796 square kilometers. Thanks to the business nature of the Nakanishi Group, from 2007 (when they conducted the Petroleum deal with Yemen) to 2013, the island had been fortified, with over a hundred kilometers of tunnels, connecting thousands of living quarters, medical facilities, research, and other things that the Nakanishi Group needed to keep secret.

"Sir, we've been keeping track of those CTF 151 and 152 ships that have sealed off this area, and three of them have moved in to about ten nautical miles of the coast. About ten more are moving within thirty nautical miles as well."

"Interesting," the PMC commander said, in his Russian accent. English was the de facto language spoken around here, as it needed to be amongst the international band of PMC soldiers. "Have they detected anything?"

"No, but I intercepted a radio conversation between two ships, err…the USS _Vantage_ and a Belgian ship, the Louise-Marie."

"What were they talking about?"

"Well, one of them said that they might put an away team on the island."

"Shit." That was to be expected, and the PMC commander knew it was a matter of time before Allied forces started to put down troops to secure the area.

"What should I do, sir?"

"Give me a second. I have to confirm with Kunzite, but I think you're going to put those missile launchers to use."

"Of course."

The PMC commander reached for a phone nearby. "Put me through to Kunzite."

"Kunzite speaking." His voice was tired and lifeless; the death of Zoicite had been a hard blow to him especially, and he seemed to lose the luster and energy that he usually possessed. He had hoped beyond hope that Zoicite would make it back to Socotra, especially after he escaped the United Kingdom. But they…the SAILOR team and some other special forces units, had caught up to him in Florence, Italy. The spectacular gunfight had been broadcast live, and the mangled body of Zoicite was put out for all the world to see.

Kunzite wanted revenge, he wanted to strike back, he wanted people to die. But they had expended most of their capital on Operation TAKE HOLD, and now because of their mistakes, they were stuck in this god-forsaken island, able to operate indefinitely but not able to take the offensive. Now Kunzite was broken, and had been inconsolable even by Beryl.

"Kunzite," the PMC commander stated. "We have three incoming ships off of the coast at ten nautical miles, and ten more coming in at thirty. They're getting more brave, and I think it's time for more drastic measures."

Kunzite paused for a second, letting his platinum blond hair drape around his face and the telephone he was holding. This would be an excellent opportunity to show how the world that Nakanishi was still a force to be reckoned with, the fuckers. He could finally have some revenge for his lover's death, at least.

"Do it. Take them out, I don't care what it takes. Make sure they hurt."

"Affirmative." The PMC hung up the phone, and nodded to the radar operator. "Alright, get the automated defenses online, get the ready team to their posts."

"Roger that." The radar operator started making calls to the other personnel on the base, and soon, the hum of robots and automated missile launchers came online, ready to do their deadly work.

* * *

"Looks like the sun is finally coming up," the XO said, noting the rising sun in the distance.

"Very beautiful," Commander Woodsworth said. He stood there, taking the view. While it was winter here, there wasn't any snow like his home in Newport News, where he was stationed. The kids would be in bed right now, after a nice day out in the snow, with a big mug of hot cocoa with white fluffy marshmallows…

"USS _Vantage_, this is the HMDS _Absalon_, come in, over."

Woodsworth sighed, the daydream interrupted, picked up the receiver to his radio and replied to the other ship.

"Good morning _Absalon_, how are you doing this morning, over?"  
"Very good," was the terse reply. It seemed that the Danes were in a more serious mood than the Belgians.

"That's…nice to hear. Have you seen or heard anything concerning the island, over?"

"Negative, _Vantage_, over." The Danes really weren't in a talking mood. Maybe they just needed coffee.

"Do you have anything else to report?" Woodsworth said.

"Negative, _Vantage_. We'll let you know if we see anything. Out." They cut the transmission.

"Talkative bunch," XO said to Woodsworth. "Hope they help us more if we get into a bit of a fix."

"Heh, I sure hope so." the Commander replied. "Helm, steady as she goes."

It was at this point that one of the radar operators started to see little blips fading in and out on his screen. He squinted a little bit harder at it, and tapped the screen.

"Uh…sir?" the radar operator said over the ship's intercom. "I'm getting…"

His screen suddenly lit up with _thousands_ of contact. The stealth coating of the hidden radar and missile facilities on the island slid away as they prepared to acquire their targets.

"Oh…my…god."

"What is…" Woodsworth began to say, but stopped when he looked at the radar display. How was that possible?

"Sir, I'm getting a bunch of contacts that…"

Alarm klaxons suddenly went off. A blip on the radar screen suddenly appeared from the coast of the island. That could only mean one thing.

"Vampire vampire vampire! Missile Launch!" the radar operator screamed out. "Missile Launch!" On his screen, a missile popped up from nowhere and rapidly closed toward them. From the way it was bobbing in and out of his radar screen, it was probably an Exocet missile, infamous for its use during the Falklands War. The Exocet, after being fired, would hug the sea surface, no more than one meter above the waves, and pop up at the last second as to not give anti-missile defenses the chance to shoot it down. At the current range and speed, it would hit in about sixty seconds.

"Helm, bring us around and get us the hell out of here!"

"Yes sir!"

"General Quarters! All hands to battle stations!" Commander Woodsworth yelled into the ship's PA system. That was a redundant order, but they had not been expecting a combat operation, and certainly not a missile being launched in their direction.

"Jesus!" the XO hissed as he got into his flak jacket. "Get the vertical launch system ready!"

"Not enough time!" the weapons officer yelled back at him. "It'll take more than sixty seconds to get the missiles ready!"

Commander Woodsworth was in a bind; the anti-missile defenses that they depended on would not be ready and the other defenses they had might not work.

"Have the Seewhiz engage that missile when it's in range!"

"Forty seconds to impact!"

At this rate, the automated guns of the Phalanx Close in Weapons System (CIWS) would only have ten seconds to engage the target before it impacted with the USS _Vantage_.

It was the only thing that they had that would prevent that missile from destroying them at this point.

"Twenty seconds!" the radar operator announced.

"Helm, take us out of here!" Woodsworth screamed.

"I'm giving it all she's got, captain!" the helmsman yelled back.

Ha ha, very funny, Woodsworth sarcastically thought to himself.

"Ten seconds!"

The automated Phalanx CIWS guns opened up, their computers tracking the low flying Exocet zipping along the waves. The 20mm shells they were firing at 100 per second could obliterate a missile, let alone flesh and blood, provided that they could actually hit the target. Ironically, this was the exact reason CIWS had been developed; after the Falklands, Western navies realized that they needed something extra to combat anti-ship missiles like Exocet that hugged the sea and popped up at the last second. Weapon systems like Phalanx CIWS, Goalkeeper, and DARDO had been developed out of this need.

Brrrrrrrrmmmmmm! The two CIWS guns spat out their 20mm shells, firing 300 rounds apiece, and the missile was down, exploding harmlessly in the sea.

"Jesus," the XO said, exhaling. "What the hell was that?"  
"It looked like an Exocet missile, sir," the weapons officer said to him.

"Sir, you need to go to the CIC. If anything else happens..."

"Second missile launch!" the radar operator yelled out.

"Shit, move sir!"

Woodsworth and the XO moved quickly to the CIC, leaving the bridge to the helm and other officers who would direct the fight from there. They quickly took their seats at their respective stations, and put on headphones to communicate with the rest of the crew.

"Captain, another missile has hit the Louise-Marie, and they're transmitting a distress signal," a comm officer said to him.

"Put it up on the radio!"

"USS _Vantage_, this is the _Louise-Marie_! We've been hit by an Exocet missile and are listing hard to port! We need assistance, over!"

Woodsworth "That is a negative _Louise-Marie_, we are under attack ourselves and cannot assist, over!"  
"Affirmative USS _Vantage_, we'll try to…"

The radio cut out at that point.

"Sir," the radar operator said to Woodsworth. "The Louise-Marie just disappeared from radar." That revelation made it all but clear to the USS _Vantage;_ the Nakanishi Group was heavily armed and would defend themselves extremely aggressively.

Woodsworth could hear the CIWS guns firing, and the Exocet missile fell short, ripped apart by the 20mm shells. There was nothing that could be done about the _Louise-Marie_.

The captain of the USS _Vantage_ put in his fire ignition key and turned it, allowing the missiles from the vertical launch system to be fired. Now, they stood a chance.

* * *

"Looks like he's armed the vertical launch system," the radar operator noted back on Socotra.

"Won't be enough," the PMC commander noted.

"How many missiles do we have?"

"A lot, sir."

"As in?"

"10,000 Exocet missiles. Plus those Harpoons we have in back."

That was more than a lot of navies in the world could muster at one given time.

"Let's see how the USS _Vantage_ does against fifty Exocet missiles. Fire!" The operator hit the release command, and dozens of white trails started to appear from the island.

"Sir…Sir!" the radar operator yelled out to the Commander.

"What is it?!"

"I've got fifty incoming contacts!"

The entire CIC was silent for a second, as the gravity of the situation hit everyone involved. Fifty missiles…somebody wanted them very, very dead. The blips on the radar screens cluttered together to form one, big mass. Only the computers could tell the individual missiles apart.

"Fire…fire!" Woodsworth stuttered. "Target everyone! Somebody fire!"  
The fire control officer hit the fire button to the RIM-66 anti-missile/anti-air missiles. The USS _Vantage_ carried ninety six of them in her vertical launch system, being an Aegis designed system. Within seconds, missiles started launching from the system, clouds of smoke from the ignited fuel propelling the missiles toward their intended targets obscuring the USS _Vanta_ge. Missiles screamed out of the launch bays, flying up into the air before turning toward their targets. The ship shuttered as the missiles flew off the rails, only to be quickly reloaded by the automated system for another launch. Just to make sure, two or three missiles were fired per target. The blips on the screen started to disappear, and at 10 nautical miles, the majority of the missiles had been destroyed.

The radio was filled with a huge volume of traffic, from the other ships in the area who had heard the distress calls of the _Louise-Marie_, and now the _Absalon_, who had taken several Exocet missiles.

"This is the HDMS _Absalon_!" her captain screamed over the radio, the calmness from before gone. "We're hit and going down! We're going down! Is there anyone for assistance?!"

"HDMS _Absalon_, we cannot assist," Commander Woodsworth answered, trying to keep his attention on the radar screen. "Is the ECM working? Good! Sorry Captain, we cannot render assistance to…"

"Captain!" his XO yelled out. He pointed to the screen.

Two missiles had gotten through. The first one, distracted by the chaff zipped off toward the aft of the ship and right into their ASW helicopters, two SH-60 Sea Hawks. Both were destroyed in a blaze of fire and smoke, rocking the entire ship and killing several crew members above decks.

The second one blitzed in, despite the Phalanx fire. It hit the starboard side and punched a large hole above the waterline, penetrating the armor and destroying some living quarters, a security station and part of the kitchen, but it avoided any essential parts of the _Vantage_. That still didn't mean that there was damage from the concussion and fire to engineering, the CIC, and navigation.

The explosion threw everyone to the ground, tossing chairs and computer around, smashing displays, and rupturing pipes. After lying on the floor for what it seemed like forever, Commander Woodsworth picked himself up.

"Damage report!" he screamed over the din of klaxons, cries for help, and his own ringing in the ears. "XO? XO?!"

"I'm here sir," his XO replied, coughing. His white uniform was stained with blood and soot. "Standby for damage report."

* * *

"Sir, there's several more ships in range," the radar operator stated.

"Target all of them. 100 missiles, ten per ship."

"On the way."

Within a minute, missiles flew off the rails on the concealed Socotra launchers fired toward the

ten ships from Task Force 151 and 152. They had heard and seen the fighting on their radar screens, and rushed into help. It was too late when they realized that they were going right into a trap. They had the same reaction of the USS _Vantage _when they discovered missiles flying toward them, cluttering up their radar screens and causing a panic among everyone there.

Most of the ships were approaching from the northeast of the island, from Yemen, while the USS _Vantage_, the late _Louise-Marie_ and the HDMS _Absalon _were on the south side of the island. The missiles screamed in, powering through ECMs, anti-missile defenses, and chaff; most ships were not like the USS _Vantage_, and could not adequately defend themselves. It wasn't like the USS _Vantage_ did much better anyway.

Again, CTF 151 and 152 were meant primarily for counter-terrorism/anti-piracy operations, and while smuggled anti-ship missiles were a concern, the most they ever had to deal with were RPGs and small arms fire from the bravely stupid pirates who preyed on the shipping lines. The only reason the USS Vantagehad stood a chance against the missiles is that it was on its way to a carrier group in the Indian ocean, and as such, armed for an anti-aircraft/missile role. The recent developments in the rest of the world had put an end to that mission as carrier groups came to them instead of the other way around.

Two of the most forward ships steaming in were hit by several missiles; the HMAS _Warramunga_ and the TCG _Gaziantep_ were each hit with two missiles apiece and disabled. A fire broke out on the _Warramunga_ and threatened to overtake the magazine; quick thinking by damage control dumped the entire store into the sea before it could be overcome. Behind them was the HMS _Portland_, the USS _Ramage_, and the PNS _Saif_ were ravaged by thirty Exocet missiles; seven of them found their mark, crippling the Portland, destroying the bridge on the _Ramage_, and obliterating the_ Saif_, one of the new Zulfiquar class frigates that Pakistan had just put out. It exploded in a massive fireball, caused by the ammunition detonating after being struck by the Exocet. Slightly to the west of them, the Spanish frigate _Reina Sofia_, the TCG _Giresun_, and the USS _Gettysburg_ fared slightly better, but still were damaged by the missiles, one putting the rudder of the Gettysburg out of action, causing her to sail haplessly around in circles. Finally, almost out of range of the Exocet missiles, the USS _Chosen _and HMNZS _Te Mana_ were rocked by several near misses, but still suffered damage to their navigation equipment due to the proximity of the explosions.

In sum, Combined Task Forces 151 and 152 had just gotten their asses handed to them by solid piece of rock. The frantic calls of the ships trying to recover the crews of fallen ships resounded throughout the radio nets that day.

* * *

"I think we did some good damage today," the PMC commander said to Kunzite.

Kunzite said nothing to the PMC commander.

"Sir? Do you wish to hear the report?"

"No." His terse answer cut through the recycled air underground. "That will be all, Soshkin."

"Yes, sir." He saluted, and walked out of the ornate room that was Kunzite's office.

Kunzite swiveled his chair around to look at a picture of Zoicite. It had been taken several years earlier, when they were first dating; they were standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, with huge smiles on their faces. They had experienced plenty of discrimination in their lives, and now being Chief Operating Officers of a massive international company had been one big "fuck you" to the single-minded, discriminatory world out there. Beryl didn't really care who they were, so long as they did their jobs and got things done. Gay, bi, straight, asexual or pan-sexual, it didn't matter in her eyes. All that mattered was that the Nakanishi Group prospered and flourished. Sexual orientation had nothing to do with that at all.

"I will have my revenge," he said sadly at the picture.

* * *

"Commander," the XO reported. The CIC was somewhat damaged, but had come out mostly unscathed. Some computer screens cracked, some shattered hard drives, a couple of broken processing units, but nothing a little bit of elbow grease could fix.

"Causalities first," Woodsworth said.

"Sir, twenty dead, and seventy wounded, including both of us, sir."

That was almost a third of the ship's crew. Woodsworth sighed, knowing that in addition to all the paperwork he was going to have to fill out, the letters he was going to have to write to many a family was going to be a heartbreaking one.

The XO went on with the damage report. "Both helicopters are gone, the navigation radar is on the fritz, but both Phalanx CIWS are still online."

"What about the missiles?"

"We fired everything," the XO continued, reading off of an impromptu report, written up on some slightly bloodstained paper. "The entire magazine is empty, and if they decide to fire more missiles at us…"

"Let's hope they're just as low on ammunition as we are." He turned to the radio operator in the room. "Is the radio still working?"

"Yes sir."

"Put me through to COMUSNAVCENT," Woodsworth said. The radio operator took his time, trying to actually find a radio that worked.

At USNAVCENT HQ in Bahrain, there had been conflicting reports coming in all day. No one knew what was going on, and what little information they did have was inconsistent and scarce.

"Sir," a seaman addressed the commander of USNAVCENT, who was in his office, trying to make sense of just what the hell was going on near Socotra. POTUS, the JCS, SECNAV and every important acronym had been nagging at his raggedy ass for status reports. "We just a message from the USS Vantage, it's on the radio."

"Well, put it through!" the COMUSNAVCENT said. They needed something, anything that was going down on that infernal island. The KH-13 satellites wouldn't make another pass for an hour at least.

"Sir, sir, this is Commander Woodsworth of the USS _Vantage_," Woodsworth stated, trying to remain calm despite the chaos around them.

"What's your status?"

"Admiral, we've taken serious damage to our navigation, our helicopters our gone, all of missiles expended."

"Causalities?"  
"Heavy," Woodsworth reported. He was still in the CIC, his wardroom damaged and the bridge in disarray. An able seaman ran up with another casualty report.

"Sir, we have thirty dead and ninety wounded," he said.

"What about the _Louise-Marie_ and the _Absalon_?" Repeated hails had gone unanswered.

"I think they're both sunk, and we're in no position to assist any survivors in the condition we're in. We can barely make fifteen knots, and I don't know if they're going to attack again. We cannot continue operations."

"Understood. Can you make it back to base?"

"We'll try to go around Socotra and make it to Yemen, but that might take a couple of days at this rate. God knows what else they have there on that island."

"Thank you Commander," COMUSNAVCENT said back. "We'll try to get some help to you, but we're swamped here."

"Understood," the captain of the USS _Vantage _replied. He put the radio receiver down and leaned back against a desk that hadn't been destroyed.

Jesus, he thought. This was a very bad day.


	61. Chapter LIX: Empty Quiver, Part II

**Chapter LIX: Empty Quiver, Part II**

**1030hrs, 21 December 2013, Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States**

_"The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't find its enemy, for the sake of the enraged folks back home, it will have to manufacture one." Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice._

* * *

"Bob, take a look at this."

Robert Griffins was a civil employee working for NORAD, keeping tally of all the nuclear weapons. This, of course, was an extremely important job, doubly so since two nuclear weapons had been stolen right out from underneath them. Granted, the Nakanishi Group had a lot to do with that, but for crying out loud, they should have found something that would have given them some heads up. It was a Saturday, of course, but everyone was putting in overtime on this one.

Robert and his co-worker, Commander David Engel of the US Navy, had been pouring over the data, checking, double checking, triple checking every single iota of information that pertained to the movement of nuclear weapons in the United States over the last five years to ten years.

At least he was glad that he wasn't a contractor; they had all been put on standby pending the recent situation with the Nakanishi Group, and their security clearances revoked.

"What's up Dave?"

"Something not right here," Cmdr. Engel said. He pointed to his computer, which had a spreadsheet of all the nuclear weapons in the United States; displayed were all the warheads for the Minuteman III missile. In total, there were about 550 warheads, and in the entire nuclear arsenal, there were 2,200 warheads in sum.

"I thought that there were only two missing."

"That's what I thought as well, but take a look at this." Dave brought up a spreadsheet of the data.

"Okay, a group of W80 warheads were scheduled to be decommissioned after New START. Of that, several of them…looks like about seven of them were going to be decommissioned by this one company in Texas." He showed the company's webpage.

"Yeah? What about it?"

"Nakanishi bought that company out." He pointed to the bottom of the web page, with the disclaimer, "A Subsidiary of the Nakanishi Group, America."

Bob could see where this was going.

"So, what happened to the other five?" Bob asked him.

"Well, we know what happened to the first two. But the others…"

He brought up some shipping invoices.

"This is how they moved them."

Bob put on some spectacles and took a closer look. "Beef shipments?"

"They used their own in house shipping company and beef processing plants to disguise the transportation of the weapons. They forged the invoices and the entire decommissioning process to make it seem that they were actually destroyed, when they were in transit to other countries."

"So, they didn't steal from our active arsenal…"

"…but from our decommissioned one. That's why it didn't show up when they did a headcount of the active nuclear weapons."

This was not good at all, Bob thought to himself. "And where did it go?"

Again, the Commander brought up a bunch of shipping invoices. This time, he mapped out the locations they travelled to.

"Looks like by plane…from Texas, to Dulles, a transatlantic flight to Spain…from Spain to Saudi…from Saudi to Yemen…from Yemen…it drops off."

"Here's another one," Engels pointed out.

"This one looks like it goes from Japan, via frighter on their in-house shipping company, from Japan to Hong Kong, then Mumbai, then to Yemen…" Bob didn't want to think about the implications of this, but it was staring them in face, in all of its spreadsheet-y glory.

"Where do think they went?" the Commander asked, rhetorically.

"Didn't the Nakanishi Group have some sort of deal with Yemen…you know, to help them with their petroleum industry?"

"Go on."

"And that in exchange, they would give them that island…"

The realization of that statement hit him, like…well, a nuclear explosion.

"Oh shit."

"Oh shit is right."

"What should we do?"

"I'll tell the president," Engel replied. "Well, after I tell my CO, who'll pass it on to the President."

"Convenient that she's down the hall."

"Yeah. Very Convenient."

Commander Engel got up from seat, walked a couple of meters to his boss's office, a rear admiral with mostly technocratic background. From there, it was another four hundred meters to the President's office, then another ten to the president herself. The Chief of Staff announced the bad news.

"What?!" The President almost had a heart attack from the news. The amount of coffee she had been drinking didn't help either.

"Yes ma'am," COS Ramirez said.

"I thought you said that they all had been accumulated for!" she sputtered in confusion.

"Yes, but that was right after the terrorist attacks, and we didn't have much time to do a check, so all the active warheads were accounted for, but the ones that had been supposedly destroyed…"

"…are now sitting somewhere in Socotra, probably on some sort of launch vehicle," President Hamilton finished. "Jesus Christ, they don't need an ICBM for that, all they need is a cruise missile and they can take out the entire fleet parked right outside."

She put her hands on her face, and leaned toward her desk.

"And we just had a huge battle there yesterday. Three ships lost, five more damaged…a thousand killed, wounded or missing."

"Ma'am!" An aide came running in through the door. "It's Beryl! She's wants to talk directly to you."

POTUS and the COS looked at each other. "This is not going to end well. Put it up in here."

President Hamilton turned and faced the video screen.

"Madame President," Beryl appeared on the screen, smiling.

"Beryl," POTUS replied stoically. She had never met Beryl; after all, she was supposedly just the assistant to the CEO. But somehow, she found her way up to the top, and here they were. "What do you want?"

"I'm sure that you've secured the nuclear weapons that were supposed to blow you up, and to install the VP in your stead."

"Right…" the President was skeptical of her claims.

"It's okay. Never liked the man anyway, and you can have him for all I care. Drunk off his ass most of the time."

"But you wanted to talk about the nuclear weapons…"

"Oh yes, about that." Beryl tapped on her tablet computer. "We have five more of those nuclear warheads. We also have five Tomahawk cruise missiles. Hmm…I wonder what would happen to that nice fleet out there if we launched a couple of those." She smiled casually, as if they were talking about a missing makeup bag rather than nuclear weapons.

"You won't do much damage with those," the President shot back.

"Oh, I don't care about Yemen, but reaching Saudi Arabia, well, that's another option I could have when dealing with nuclear weapons. And that nice fleet, with those shiny, shiny nuclear carriers…all that work, down the drain. The US ability to project power, diminished, and you look like a complete ass in front of the world."

"Beryl, what do you want?!" POTUS snarled, half questioning, half accusing. "What did the world do you?!"

"Do to me? Do to me…?" Beryl sat back in her chair, pondering that statement. "President Hamilton, it's not that the world did anything…but that the world didn't do anything."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh come now, Ms. President. India. China. South Korea. Taiwan. You trade with them. You coddle up with them, and pretend that sorry little Japan doesn't even exist. We've bent backwards to align ourselves with your foreign policy, to appease you…hell, we made your favorite cars, your favorite computers, your favorite appliances. We made up for WWII thousands of times over. Hell, we gave you these nice nuclear weapons, after testing them out on our cities. But that wasn't good enough for you, wasn't it?"

It seemed that Beryl had forgotten all about Operation Tomodachi. Hamilton couldn't believe the shortsightedness of people these days.

"If you're talking about the recession, that was your doing. The 1991 one, that is."

"Oh yes, that was. Two decades of hope, of dreams, of gains and profit, gone. Gone forever. The youth condemned to be NEETs, living off of their parents. Their parents grow older, and soon the streets will be filled with the grayed and frail bodies of our aging workforce."

"Again, this not my problem…"

"Will you just be quiet for a second, Elizabeth!" Beryl's voice pierced the air. Hamilton looked at her COS, and shut up.

"Thank you. As I was saying, Japan is dying. Metaphorically, and hell, physically. You saw the earthquake. The tsunami. Set whatever growth we had, back for years. We…we, the Nakanishi Group, are Japan's last hope."

Were, Japan's last hope, the President noted bitterly to herself. Thanks for screwing them over.

"So, what do I want, Madame President? What do I want? That question you keep asking."

"Yes," POTUS said, exasperated.

"I want you to back off your fleet. I want you to leave us alone. I want you to ensure that Japan has favorable trading agreements. I want Japan to be great again. That's what I want."

"Beryl, it doesn't work that way," POTUS argued. "China can produce what you produce, cheaper and in better quantities."

"Does it look like I care about China!" Beryl screamed, banging her fist on her desk. "This why I was doing all these things!"

She glared at the President for a second, the silence as loud as any shouting match.  
"So, is that why you created the SAILOR team?" POTUS finally said, breaking the silence.

"Especially the SAILOR team! They were successful beyond all measurable calculations!" Beryl regained her aggressive veneer.  
"Except when they turned on you."  
"Yes, that part was very frustrating. But no matter. Things happen like that, I guess I no longer need those girls. They seem to be doing well in your hands anyway." That caused POTUS to raise an eyebrow.

"Listen, Madame President," Beryl said, spitting out the words. "The SAILOR team can do whatever they want. They can even come after me. Yes, they're my mistake, and perhaps your gain! But they're more of a liability than a benefit it seems, perhaps to all parties involved, hmm?"

Beryl paused, regaining her breath from the one-sided shouting match.

"Oh, and did you get the message from Jadeite?"  
"I got 'A' message from Jadeite. I don't particularly care for personal messages from terrorists." She hadn't even looked at it, but she made a mental note to go look at it later.

"Maybe you should take a look at it. It might, how should I say it, shed some light on the SAILOR team."

"Is that all?"

"Yeah. That's all. Oh, since I'm feeling extra generous today, I'll give you a whole week! That's right, a week to pull everyone back and to give in to my demands. And as a bonus, you get to break the news to the rest of the world. If you want. I don't feel like telephoning every single leader and telling them the same sob story again and again. Or appearing on a big, ominous screen and telling the entire world my plans. That's just so trite and overused."

"You're so kind," POTUS replied. "Go to hell." She terminated the conversation.

* * *

"Do you think she'll accede to your demands?" Kunzite said to Beryl, looking at the now blank screen in her office.

"Not a chance in hell. They didn't make much sense anyway; I'm not a fool, Kunzite. I'm just buying time until we can get a plan figured out." She took a sip of whisky, savoring the oaky taste in her mouth. "We're going to be here for a while, and I think that it's going to take another big battle in order to show these bastards who's in charge here."

"Why did you say that you had nuclear weapons? Why not the rest of the world?" Kunzite, for his status, was not exactly privy to all of Beryl's plans. She did get that privilege.

"I don't want to use them, since we only have five of them. I wanted the President to tell the rest of the world because…well, she's the President of the good old U.S of A. She carries much more weight than you or I at this point. The world might think I'm just bluffing, for all they care." She took another sip of whisky. "But she's not going to tell the rest of the world; they'll only flip out and do something stupid, like decide to actually comply with our demands, complicating the situation even further. The President of the most powerful nation in the world doesn't want to make things more complicated, that's for sure. And backing down and losing face? No way. So, she's going to keep it quiet. She won't move the fleet. She won't pull back. I think the President will probably attack, of all things, trying to finish us off. She'll call our bluff, we'll present the cards, and she loses."

"That's really risky," Kunzite said. "Our last risky operation cost us everything."

"Operation TAKE HOLD was an unfortunate loss simply because of that SAILOR team ruining everything for us. I highly doubt that they're in here right now to mess our plans up, but we need to act before they decide to come after us." Beryl toyed with the idea of leaking the existence of a secret special operations unit that the Japanese government ran to the press, but had since reconsidered on the idea. It was probably for the best that the fewer the people knew of that stupid program, the better. And if they went to the media…well, good luck in backing their claims up.

She looked at Kunzite; he was still hurting after the death of Zoicite.

"So, despite all of our setbacks, we can still gain something out of this."

"And what will that be?" Kunzite asked, skeptically. All their carefully laid plans for their future had gone up in smoke, along with their money, resources and prestige.

"We're still working on that," Beryl sighed, putting her glass of whisky down on the table next to her. "The world will just have to get used to us running things, that's all."

* * *

"Who else knows about this conversation?" POTUS quickly asked her COS.

"You, me, that aide over there."

"And the nuclear weapons?"

"You, me, those two analysts, and Admiral Stewart. I'm glad he's just right down the hall from us, because this information is really important."

POTUS took stock of the situation. After a second, she took a breath in and made her decision.

"Do not, I repeat, do not tell the JCS about this. Get the analysts to change the data to reflect that."

"But why not?!" COS said, shocked.

"If the JCS and NSC get word that we're missing five more nuclear weapons, they are going to go insane and withdraw everyone from Socotra. We need to keep the pressure up, and attack them before the deadline next…what day is it?"

"The 21st. So that gives us until the 28th."

"Will we be ready by then? Those carrier groups are moving quite slow, and we haven't been able to remove all the Nakanishi software from their systems, or hell, any of our systems in the United States. We were just too dependent on them."

The COS scratched his head at the reasoning of POTUS. "Madame President, why did she want you to announce that they had more nukes?"

POTUS shook her head at that. "Because she knew I wouldn't. Whatever she has planned, we have to beat her to it before she has a chance to make us look like fools. When's the next meeting with the JCS and the NSC?"

"In twenty four hours." He checked his tablet computer.

"I need them in four to move up the attack schedule. Get me in touch with the SAILOR team. They just got a new job."

* * *

"Bob, Dave, in my office," Admiral Stuart said to the two of them. After giving the bad news to their boss, Bob and Dave had been nervously sipping coffee for the last hour or so, unable to get any work done.

"This is going to be really bad," Bob muttered to Dave, putting down his cup.

"These are non-disclosure agreements." The Admiral already had a stackload of paperwork that would ensure that the three of them would never talk about this little incident.

"Jesus, who else knows about it?" Commander Engel asked his CO, picking up his pen and signing the first piece of paper laid out in front of him. He had signed so many of them before that he didn't even need to read the fine print. Basically, what it all came down to was, "Don't ever talk about this (whatever event) ever again, or else you'll end up in jail. Capisce? Good. Now sign here."  
"Not a lot," was the reply. "POTUS wants this under wraps. Otherwise, it might cause a panic, and we certainly do not need that right now. Everyone is on edge after all of these terrorist attacks, and more nuclear weapons in the mix won't do anyone any good."

"Shouldn't the JCS and the NSC know about this as well?"

"Just sign the damn forms," Stuart said to Bob. "The Commander in Chief has her reasons."

"Fine, fine." The two of them spent the next couple of minutes filling out all the paperwork.

"Well, it looks all good," the Admiral said, looking at the papers. "Take the rest of the day off. You've earned it."

"Sir, with respect…" Commander Engel started to say, but Stuart put up his hand.

"Take the rest of the day off," he repeated. "In fact, I don't want to see both of you around here for the next couple of days. Understood?"  
Bob and Dave could only nod their heads in reply. It was obvious; they weren't needed around here anymore, at least not until this entire mess had blown over. They got up from their chairs, with Commander Engel saluting, before leaving.

Both of them hoped that the President knew what the hell she was doing.

* * *

"Ma'am, why do you want to move the attack schedule up?"

The JCS was still stuck in their secure facility, hammering out the details for the attack on Socotra. Gallons of coffee had been consumed, and despite their diet of doughnuts, pastries and sandwiches, most of them were bound to lose at least five pounds in weight just due to the stress of the mission.

"There have been some developments that I do not wish to discuss at the moment, but we must have the attack begin on the Socotra fortress if we want to have any chance of getting whatever is in that island." Cryptic orders from the President were never a good sign.

"Ms. President," Admiral Thompson was looking at her laptop computer at recent fleet data. "We've run into more problems getting all of those carrier groups into the Indian Ocean, with the Suez Canal out of commission. They're moving as fast as they can, but it might take some more time than I had proposed earlier."

"Admiral, I need those aircraft carriers on station by the 25th, and be ready to launch an attack on the base, with Special Operations units and the Marines to go on the island by the 26th."

"Madame President," Landis protested. "We have no idea what's down there. They took out two naval task forces, for crying out loud, and now you want to move three carrier groups within striking range of the island? God knows what might happen then."  
"We are just going to have to take that risk," POTUS snapped back. "I'm sorry, but I need those groups within striking distance in a week, or else we're going to lose…"

"To lose what?" To General Pearson, the President was sure acting strange today, and it wasn't because of the normal load of stress.

"I just want to get this thing over with," POTUS dodged. "Too many people have died lately. Good people. The sooner we can get that facility under our control, the sooner we can put an end to this awful chapter in our history."

That sounded something like out a stump speech, General Pearson noted sarcastically.

"Ma'am, why don't we put some Special Operations units down there?" Landis asked POTUS. For all her bluster on trying to take the Nakanishi Group down, she had been somewhat reluctant to order SOCOM to put down their units there.

"Our operational capacity has been severely hampered," General Sampson of the US Army said back to him, before POTUS could reply. "The time it would take to get Special Operations units to deploy on Socotra would coincide with the invasion timetable that the President has offered."

Things were bad if Special Operations units were not able to deploy rapidly. Air crews had been working feverously in the last couple of days to strip every minute piece of Nakanishi hardware and software from military aircraft, air traffic control towers, personal computers…it was a complete and utter mess of things. The military especially was extremely wary of the software being able to track the movements of their planes and troops, and even if a program seemed innocuous, they weren't going to take any sort of risks on that one. So the Special Operations guys sat around, bored shitless and wondered if they were going to kick some ass, and the Nakanishi Group prepared for the inevitable assault on their island fortress.

"Yes, that was the explanation I was going to offer," POTUS said.

"Madame President, we'll do our best." Admiral Thompson was not happy about the President's orders, but she was the commander-in-chief.

"That's all I expect you to do. Keep me posted." She terminated the transmission.

"Goddammit, what's gotten into her?!" the Marine exclaimed.

"Landis, keep your cool," Army reminded him.

"Geez. I do NOT want to lose any more Marines, like that one incident with Al-Asad. Now that could have been very bad."

"At least we got the nuclear weapon in that case," Pearson said. "I'll start doing recon flights and draw up potential targets for airstrikes, although I don't know what good that will do."

The JCS got back to work, chugging more and more coffee and wondering what the President was up to.


	62. Chapter LX: Those who are not with us…

**Chapter LX: Those who are not with us…**

**1030hrs, 22 December 2013, Yokota Air Base, Tokyo, Japan.**

_"How do we pick and choose where to get involved? …Peacekeeping nations have become accustomed to acting if, and only if, international public opinion will support them, a dangerous path that leads to a moral relativism in which a country risks losing sight of the difference between good and evil, a concept that some players on the international stage view as outmoded." Lt. General Romeo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil._

* * *

Amy and Mina had flown back to Japan after the entire India operation. There had been no time for congratulations; there was still much more work to be done in regards to the assault on the Socotra fortress. Serena and her team were on a video call with the rest of them from Aviano Air Base, when they were interrupted by President Hamilton with an urgent message.

"I've got some really bad news."

The call from POTUS wasn't unexpected, despite the rushed introduction. The news she had was.

"Beryl has several more nukes on hand," she said, the bags under her eyes betraying what had been haunting her for the last couple of hours.

There was a collective silence from the gathered SAILOR team.

"Are you sure?" Amy finally asked.

"Beryl told me herself. She just called me and we had a nice long chat."

"Fuck," Raye hissed.

"I've moved the attack schedule up to 26December, but that's just one day before Beryl deploys the nukes to wipe out the fleet. I have not told any of my highest advisors of this information."

"Why not?!" Amy was in disbelief, as were the rest of the SAILOR team.

"We need Beryl and Kunzite brought to justice, and brought to justice, now." POTUS put extra emphasis on the word, "now." "Whatever is left of the Nakanishi Group is contained in that island, and perhaps, their information on their research would be extremely beneficial to rest of the world. Be it as it may, Beryl is more than willing to deploy nuclear weapons in order to make her point, and to kill many more people in process."

She took a sip of water before continuing. "SAILOR team. Quite literally, you our last hope, since you are in a position to take down the Nakanishi Group singlehandedly."

"But…shouldn't others know about this?" Raye asked.

"Like I said before, you are very personally involved in this mission," POTUS replied, coolly. "You have the training and ability to infiltrate this fortress, and my special operations units will not be able to assault the fortress until the fleet arrives there on the 26th. You'll be there in front of them, and help to secure the fortress."

"What if things go wrong though? What then?" Lita asked her, obviously concerned about the amount of trust the President of the United States was putting into them. This was completely off the scale, and if they didn't live up to their expectations…

"You won't mess up," POTUS said to them. "This is only to expedite things, and while I will be using Special Operations teams, you are the ones that know the entire scope of the mission, and as such, the ones to enter the base and ensure that Beryl and Jadeite are terminated."

"And how exactly are we supposed to do this?" Serena asked her. The President looked surprised to hear her speak without the aid of Amy or Mina. "Err, my English has gotten better in the last couple of days."

"Right…anyway, I'm going to have the British government transfer whatever else they captured on that raid on the Nakanishi Cyberwarfare people. Perhaps you could find something else in there that they missed."

"Understood," Serena said. "Amy, you get on that with Luna and Artemis, and make sure that you that you comb every single piece of information concerning the Socotra fortress."

"Got it." Amy terminated the link with Serena and her team, and turned to Luna, who was sitting there in the hanger there with them.

"I don't know where to begin," Luna said, frustrated. "The information that we have is mostly memos, bank statements, and the minutes of literally thousands of meetings. I've done some preliminary searches, but no blueprints, no plans, not even an email concerning Socotra."

"Did you look through the new information from the UK?"

"Yeah. Nothing."

Luna, Artemis and Amy spent the next couple of hours looking for something that might help them in the terabytes of information that they had to wade through. Mina made some tea and biscuits, refilling their cups and passing the biscuits around. They were quickly gobbled up.

"Dammit," Artemis cursed, looking at a particular directory that was complete gibberish. "This data is corrupted here."

"Let me take a look at it," Amy said. Artemis scrolled back to the directory and clicked on it. More gibberish. Weird and strange symbols filled the screen, akin to the mojibake that occurred when a computer didn't have the proper means to read Chinese characters.

"See? Nothing." He started to exit out of the directory when something caught Amy's eye. It was an email in plain text, buried in the nonsensical information. From a computing standpoint, that was pretty shoddy encryption; that email should have been buried underneath mounds of encrypting software, password protected with a hundred-thousand character password, and stored on an offsite and offline secure server. But, here it was.

"Wait, wait, go back to that. Click on that." From what it looked like, Amy noted that it was an email about the Socotra fortress. "Looks like it was gleaned off of Beryl's personal email account. Someone cracked her password and was able to access all of her secure emails."

"Who did that?" Artemis asked, his interest peaked. Amy pulled up some information about anything that had to deal with security breaches in the Nakanishi Group's servers.

"Some persons named Anne and Alan. No last name given." Amy pulled up some personnel records that had been saved in the database. "Anne, born in the Russian Federation, DOB, unknown, but apparently, she's a great data manipulation expert. Alan, born in the Netherlands, DOB, unknown, served in the French Foreign Legion, joined up with the Nakanishi Group as a data security expert. Both promoted over that incident with Beryl's email."

"Promoted?" Artemis asked, finishing up the last of his cheese puffs. "Why's that?"

"It's an industry standard. If you get into something that secure, then obviously you must be really good at your job. It's not without some risk, but if you succeed…well."

"Except these two were killed by the SAS." Luna brought up a Sky News report on the internet that described the shootout with the SAS and the official statement from the PM's office. Apparently, no one was mourning too much for these people.

"Very much so," Amy said, reading the news report.

"She looks really strange," Mina appeared again, this time with more tea. "Alan, now he looks pretty hot," she said, trying to get a rise out of Amy. It didn't work.

"What does the email say?" Artemis steered the conversation back on topic.

"Oh, right. Let's take a look at it." Amy stripped the junk data away, leaving only the email and a couple of attachments.

It read;

"Beryl,

Here's the 'hypothetical' plans that we've drawn up for the installation you requested. I'm not quite sure why you want to do this to this island, but it's your money. The construction job will take at least 100 million dollars, and plus another hundred or so in regards to shipping all the necessary personnel, equipment and other things that might be needed on the island.

Attached are the blueprints that we came up with. I hope it's better than the other ones that those idiots in France came up with.

Sincerely,

John Albertson, CEO.

Howard-Griffins Construction Group (a Nakanishi Subsidiary)."

"What happened to that guy, anyway?" Artemis asked.

"Let's see."

Luna searched for "John Albertson," and came up with several more articles on him.

"Surprise, surprise," she said dryly. "He died in a car accident in 2008, a year after his company was bought out by the Nakanishi Group. At that time, the Nakanishi Group was still mostly tech and banking, but purchasing this medium size company was something of an odd maneuver for them at the time, since the recession hit construction companies really hard."

"Not a big surprise, considering how Beryl acts," Amy noted. "Let's take a look at these blueprints."

She opened up the attachments.

"Whoa."

The blueprints described the entirety of the proposed facility, from the hallways, specifications on living quarters, dining halls, greenhouses and storage spaces.

"Any mention of gun emplacements or missile sites?" Luna looked intensely at the blueprints, scanning for anything that could be of use.  
Amy shook her head on that one, coming to the same conclusion as Luna as they looked over the blueprints. "I don't see them on here. I don't think they would trust a civilian company to do stuff like that, considering they had the CEO killed."

"So much for locating anything useful," Mina said, frustration edging into her normally serene voice.

Luna tried to be optimistic. "It still could be some use, albeit limited. Once you get in there…"

Amy shook her head at that. "If we can get in there, period. I don't see any entrances…"

Artemis suddenly saw something that could be of use. He brought it to the attention of the rest of them.

"Take a look at that."

Artemis pointed to a small spot on the south side of the island, near one of the now abandoned towns. Luna leaned in a bit further to take a look at the blueprints. "It looks like…a submarine pen?"  
Amy did some quick calculations on the dimensions of the place. "It's too small for actual submarines, but something like those research submersibles…it's a perfect place for them to dock."

"That's a quite convenient place to have," Mina said.

Amy shrugged. "In case of emergencies, I guess."

"Do you think we could use it to get in there?" Mina wondered, peering at the submersible dock.

"It looks like one of the more viable entrances," Amy noted. "There's an airport on the west side of the island, but I don't see any actual 'entrances' per se. They must have added them later, using a different company."

"Well, this looks like a promising development, nonetheless," Luna positively commented. "Anyway, we'd better share this with the rest of the SAILOR team." Amy and Luna set up the call, and within a couple of minutes, they were talking with Serena.

* * *

"Take a look at this." Amy had put up some schematics up on the screen. "Took us awhile to find it, but after much looking, we got it."

"What is it?" Serena asked, squinting at her laptop screen.

"This was apparently in the Nakanishi servers in the United Kingdom before they got shot up by the SAS. It's the blueprints for the island…"

"Alright, way to go Amy!" Serena exclaimed.

"…in 2007." That killed the mood immediately.

"So, we still have the blueprints, right?" Serena was still hopeful that this could help their cause, no matter that the information was out of date.

"Well, they might have changed things between then," Amy said. "From what I can tell, there were several more variants planned for this fortress, and this was only one of them."

"So we might just have an incomplete or completely out of date floor plan," Raye glumly added. That was no fun at all.

"Exactly. Still, this gives a good sense of scale of this fortress. There's hundreds of kilometers worth of tunnels in facility, living spaces for up to forty-thousand people, research facilities, greenhouses for food, storage areas, the whole lot of it."

"Any place where Beryl might be located?" Serena asked.

"Let's see…yeah, there's an executive office complex located underneath the highest point on the island. There's a name for it…let me see." She looked up the article on the internet "It's the Haghier Mountains," Amy said. "On the blueprints they give the height…its 1503 meters high."

Luna shook her head at the massive amount of work that must have taken. "How the hell did they manage to excavate all that land in that amount of time?"

"Beats me. Maybe they used a lot of lasers or something like that," Mina chimed in.

Amy jabbed her in the ribs, causing her to wince. "Mina, that makes no sense."

"Sorry."

Serena wondered why Mina was wincing, but continued on with the conversation. "Anyway, that might take days to fight through from the surface. Is there any other way that we can get into this facility?"

"There was a planned submersible entrance on the south side of the island. I'm not quite sure about how that was executed in reality, but there might be a place for us to enter there via underwater infiltration."

Lita groaned in the background, hearing the plan unfold in front of them. "Great. We've never done anything like that before."

"Only in the VR sims…and we only briefly went over that part," Serena said, her eyes narrowing at the prospect of a scuba dive into enemy territory.

"That's the only way I can see getting there without getting shot up," Amy said.

"Uh, question?"

Everyone focused their attention on Raye. Questions from Raye were few and far between.

"How are we going to get to the island in the first place if they're shooting everything that moves? I mean, a ship would be a really big target, and a helicopter could easily be shot down."

There was silence as the team pondered their options.

"We could use a RIB," Amy finally said.

That brought some confused looks from the other people in the team. "Um…Amy…" Serena began, asking her to elaborate.

"Sorry." She pulled up some images. "A Ridged Inflatable Boat. Most naval ships carry one, and it's small enough to avoid detection.

"What's the catch?" Raye asked.

"It's going to be one hell of a ride toward the island. Most of the fleet is located about 75 nautical miles out, and most, higher performance RIBs have a top speed of about 40 to 50 knots. So that would be…"

She did some calculations.

"That would be about an hour and forty five minutes. It can be shorter if we push it faster, but we might risk capsizing or even worse."

"Amy, this is a risky plan you're proposing," Serena said to her.

"I don't see what other choice we have in order to get close enough to the island. It's that or letting Beryl nuke a couple thousand people to death."

"Can those boats hold all five of us and our equipment?" Serena asked.

"Yeah, they can. But it's more of a case of what we're taking rather than how much we can hold. If it's our scuba equipment, weapons, explosives, and everything else that we might possibly need for this mission, then we might need to take more than one RIB. But that's only in case if all of the stuff doesn't fit, and I think it will."

"That sounds good. We'll take two just in case."

Serena looked down at her tablet computer to see what was next on her agenda.

"What are we going to need to assault this place?"

"Well…" Amy seemed a bit hesitant on that one. "Um, to backtrack on what I said earlier…We're not going to be able to carry everything in there, even with the RIBs."

"Why is that?" Serena's eyes narrowed, again. It wasn't like Amy to be indecisive.

"I think we might have to resort to enemy weaponry and equipment in order to render this base ineffective. I mean, we can pack as much equipment that we can on the RIBs, but they must have some other types of explosives that we can use in order to take down this place. I don't' know, I'm just making stuff up now…" Amy rubbed her eyes; she was tired, like everyone else. And when you started get really tired, you started making mistakes, words slurred together, actions became harder and harder to execute.

Serena just shrugged at her actions though, and pressed forward anyway. "I guess we'll get to that later. Raye, I'm going to give you the explosives and whatever else that you think might be necessary in order to complete the mission."

Raye nodded to her. "Gotcha."

"Lita, you can bring that taser along if you want, but I'm going to have to say that you're going to have to drop the shield and bring along a machine gun. We're going to be up against a lot of people in there, and the more firepower, the better."

Lita just nodded her head in reply to Serena. They couldn't get their weapons right now, but once they got to…wherever they were going to, they would get more situated and iron out the details there.

"Amy, I want you to focus on the technology aspect on this one. Since they have a facility of this size, most of their systems would be automated?"

"Most certainly. It'd be almost impossible to run a facility this size without some form of automated defenses, maintenance and intelligence gathering systems. Even if they were fully staffed down there, which I don't they are, the sheer size of the facility would make human operations difficult."

"Good. In terms of weapons, pack lightly and bring whatever technology…stuff…thingys that you deem necessary."

"Will do."

"Mina…er…" She seemed at a loss to what do to with Mina. She normally gave long-range sniper support, but she hadn't been doing that as of late, sticking with her guile skills. Those however, wouldn't be much use in a hostile environment such as this one, unless she could make Beryl give herself up. Which wouldn't happen in any case, since they were going to shoot her in the face the first chance they got.

Mina sensed Serena's hesitation and interjected her own thoughts. "You want me to provide long range support, perhaps with a battle rifle or designated marksman weapon that'll allow for further engagement of targets?"

"Yeah. That one."

"Won't it be a bit useless of me though, if we're going into a confined area?"

Serena just shrugged. "Mina, just do whatever. I trust you."

Although Serena was being very vague concerning her role in the mission, at least she could have some operational freedom with her loadout. "Got it, Serena."

"Artemis, Luna."

Artemis had been dozing off in the background, and Luna had been distracted by some other work before Serena called on them. Their reactions vaguely reminded her of a time when she was caught off guard, with no idea what she was supposed to be doing in high school. Oh, those were the days…

"Yes, Serena," Luna replied.

"Will you be in contact with us during the mission at Socotra?"

Luna shrugged at her, not exactly confident. "Artemis and I can try to be in contact with you during the mission, but it'll be difficult. We'll try to arrange a plane or some other craft that can loiter nearby and keep in constant contact with you."

"That's good," Serena started to say, but Luna continued on, cutting her off.

"However, I don't know how much of a help we can be, if we don't even know what is down there. The specs on that fortress that we have are outdated, and we don't know if they even have a network that can be hacked. Remember, these guys built almost all of the secure networks for the US military and the JSDF, so they'll be expecting any sort of incursion on their end. If we even find their network in the first place."

"At least you can give us some sort of support from up there, and keep us informed of the battle. Maybe even tell us where those nuclear weapons are supposed to be."

"Yeah…I guess." Luna seemed unsure of herself on that one, but they had to soldier on and make do with what little information they had at the moment. Amy suddenly interrupted the conversation.

"Serena, we need to get a move on now, otherwise we won't be able to catch a flight there on time."

It seemed that they would have to do more planning later, as Amy and Luna had to catch a plane to the airbase in Qatar along with everyone else involved in the mission.

"Understood," Serena replied. "Amy, Mina, what time are you supposed to fly out here?"

"Right now, actually. Our plane will take us to one of the airbases in Qatar. You guys are supposed to catch a plane from Aviano to that air base as well. I'll have POTUS or somebody else get you a flight ASAP."

"Thanks. I guess this will be the first time we'll be seeing each other in a couple of weeks, huh?"

"Yep. We'll see you then."

"Okay, bye." Serena terminated the conversation, wondering if they could actually pull this thing off.


	63. Chapter LXI: Downtime

**Chapter LXI: Downtime.**

**1900hrs, 24 December 2013, "Undisclosed Air Base", Qatar.**

_"Vacation is what you take when you can't take what you've been taking any longer." Cowardly Lion, The Wizard of Oz._

_"Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; I would my true love did so chance, To see the legend of my play, To call my true love to my dance; Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love, This have I done for my true love." Tomorrow Shall Be my Dancing Day._

* * *

The "Undisclosed Air Base" had come a long way from its humble beginnings as a simple patch of land in yet another line of Gulf monarchies, fuelled by oil profits with a growth rate of about twenty percent per year. They had a lot of money to burn, and were more than happy to let the United States come in and establish a presence there. The emir himself had expressed his desire for a permanent US base there, and the United States was more than willing to indulge him. In addition to the normal military operations and airfield, there was a swimming pool, a Fox Sports News bar, a PX, and all the trappings of a nice place for some well-deserved R&R. When Iraq was still a hot item, thousands of soldiers, marines, seamen and airmen passed through this place on their way to that country, enjoying some downtime before heading to the real war, or de-stressing from their finished tour. Whether they also came back in a box draped in a US flag was something that no one in the US military could control.

Interestingly enough, this would be the first time that the entire SAILOR team would be reunited in person in about a couple of weeks. Ever since Amy and Mina had run off to Hong Kong, they had been busy trying to save the world and there had been no time to return home and catch up with the others.

"Hey guys!" Serena stood up from the chair she was sitting in. The USAF had been nice enough to provide a trailer for them (at the expense of some poor airmen), and it was even air conditioned.

"Serena." Amy gave a curt bow to her, putting down her heavy duffel bag and slumped in a chair in the common area.

"Hey, don't sit down, I haven't given you a hug yet." Amy smiled weakly, and stood back up. Serena embraced her. "Nice to see you again."

"Nice to see you too, Serena."

Serena turned her attention to Mina, who was coming in the door with her baggage.

"Mina, how are you doing?"  
"Doing just fine," she replied, chipper as ever. She gave a warm hug to Serena. Serena then turned around and saw Luna and Artemis walking in the door.

"Luna, Artemis, glad to see that you made it here as well."

"Thanks." Luna and Artemis tiredly walked in, with Artemis almost wiping out on the small door ledge.

"Careful!" Serena helped Artemis steady himself.

"I'm just really tired. We've been moving around a lot, and I guess the last week or so has been rough on everyone."

"Well, we've all been through a lot," Serena reassured.

"Just a quick side note, we brought most of your equipment on one of the transport planes and it's been unloaded by one of the hangers. We'll pick it up tomorrow when we leave for the destroyer."

"Thanks," Serena said to her.

"Where's our rooms again?" Luna asked her, after shifting her bag about uncomfortably for a second.

"Ah, to the left, second door on the right," Serena pointed.

"Thanks. We're going to put our stuff down, and we'll join you later."

Artemis and Luna went to their room, and found it still packed with airmen who were trying to get out of there.

"Give us a moment, okay?" a senior airman said to them. "You can put your stuff over there." She pointed to a corner.

Luna and Artemis simply nodded their acknowledgement to the airman. The two of them put their stuff down and walked back out into the common area, where the SAILOR team was chatting amongst themselves.

"I guess since it's Christmas…why don't we get some chicken?" Serena suggested. Yet another peculiarity of Japanese culture.

"I think I heard one of the people on the plane talk about how the KFC and the rest of the restaurants deliver here," Amy said.

"Wait…there's a KFC nearby? They deliver?!" Raye immediately grabbed a landline phone and dialed for an operator (yeah, they still have those) before Amy could look the number up on her tablet computer.

"Hello…hello…?! Operator?!" She was shouting in the phone, loud enough to drown out the operator on the other side. Amy had to walk over to her and take the receiver away from Raye.  
"Raye, you're speaking in Japanese, and they're speaking in Arabic. They're not going to understand you at all." She motioned to give the phone to her. Raye gave her the phone.

"Hello?" Thankfully, the operator on the other line spoke English. "Yeah, can you put me in contact with the delivery number for the KFC in the area? Which one? The one nearest to the air base. Yes, thank you."

Amy quickly looked up the menu for the KFC and discovered that there was a particular meal for 99 Qatari Riyal.

"How does this look?" she said, holding her computer up to the rest of the SAILOR team gathered. It brought a bunch of enthusiastic nods.

Again, since this was an MNC doing business in a foreign country, and since a great deal of their clients were foreign people (read, Americans), the delivery line was in English. Thank god for globalization.

Amy quickly asked for two of the largest meals on the menu, which came out to 198 Riyal, and with delivery, it would probably be 250-260 Riyal in total. Since the base "didn't exist," they were going to have to drop it off at the front gate (totally not suspicious). It would be there within the hour, and they would call when they got to the gate.

"So, what have you guys been up to?" Lita asked Mina and Amy as they sat in the common area of the trailer, looking at the now evicted airmen trying to get all their stuff out.

"Well, you know, this and that. Trying to save the world, per the usual." That got a chuckle from everyone.

"Excuse me." It was the senior airman again.

"Yes, ma'am, what is it?" Amy replied in English. That took the airman aback; they all had been talking in Japanese before and she hadn't expected all of them to speak English that well.

"We'll be leaving now," the airman said to her. "I think a couple of the guys here are finishing packing up, but most of us have moved out."

"Thank you ma'am," Amy politely replied. Rank or no rank, the SAILOR team was intruding in on someone's living arrangements at probably the worst time of year, when they were far away from home and on an important holiday. Amy felt pretty bad about doing such a thing, but there wasn't much she could do about that now. The senior airman, along with a couple of others took their duffel bags and left the trailer, the door hitting loudly against the frame.

"How was America?" Serena asked after they had left. She was curious about the happenings in that country.

"Oh, it was great," Mina said, cutting Amy off before she could say anything. "I drove really really fast on the highways, I got to eat all the donuts I wanted to have…"

"You WHAT?!" Serena's voice scared almost everyone in the room, and causing the remaining AF personnel in the trailer to stare at them for a second before moving on.

"Just kidding Serena, I only had a couple of donuts here and there." She turned and winked at Amy. "Right Amy?"

Amy scratched her head in confusion. "I don't remember that part."

"We stopped at that Krispy Kreme after we got Nephrite. You talked me out of going to see that Nephrite guy's girlfriend and so we went there instead."

"Yeah…" That still wasn't ringing any bells for Amy. She wondered how they managed to get donuts after a major terrorist attack on the United States. Oh well.

"What about Nephrite?" Lita asked, trying to get Serena off the topic of donuts.

"Well, after we rescued the President of the United States," Mina began, only to interrupted by Serena.

"Oh, only the President of the United States," Serena said sarcastically. "It's like I do that on a daily basis."

"Hush. We broke this entire thing open, hmm?" Mina shot back. "So show us some respect."  
"Alright, alright," Serena held up her hands in defeat. "You saved the world and got donuts without me, I get it."

"Anyway, we caught up to Nephrite at this really small town in Mary…Mary…"

"Maryland," Amy added.

"Mary-land." Mina said it that way instead of the other pronunciation, "Marilynd." "Anyway, we got a lot of that information out of him…" She trailed off, remembering that cold night. "…and that's how we got here today." Serena smiled and nodded, oblivious to Mina's uncomfortableness on the subject. Amy quickly changed gears and got Serena talking about something else.

"Tell me about Italy, you guys," Amy said to Serena.

"Other than gunning down hapless Nakanishi goons in some of the most historically important parts of Florence? Nothing too special. We didn't have time to go see the Uffizi or anything like that before we had to go to Aviano Air Base and fly out of there. I would like to go back sometime and actually explore the place."

"Heh, that would be something else," Raye said, watching a fly lazily buzz about the room. "Mina, you've been to Italy, right?"

"Only once, and that was awhile back, when I was living in England."

"Oh, only once," Raye mocked.

"Stop it you guys," Amy said. "We'll get enough traveling in once this is over with, okay?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Serena said back.

* * *

Bring Bring. The landline phone rung, interrupting their conversation; Amy picked it up to discover that the delivery guy was about five minutes out.

"Chicken is almost here, guys," she told the rest of them.

"Mina, Amy, go get the chicken," Serena ordered, playfully. Amy was about to raise her voice in protest, but Mina grabbed her by the arm and led her out of the trailer.

"Nice one," Lita smirked to Serena.

"Well, they seem a bit closer than I remember," Serena noted, getting up from the sofa she was sitting on, putting her stuff away in the room that they were staying in for the night. She hefted her duffel bag onto the bed, looking at some of the equipment that was inside it before shoving in under the bed and flopping on the semi-soft mattress.

"Yeah, I noticed that," Lita said to her, putting her duffel bag underneath her bed. She did the same as Serena, and winced in pain. "Goddamn, these mattresses are really uncomfortable."

"It's like sleeping on a rock."

"Hey, it's better than what we had in China."

"We didn't have any mattresses in China," Raye said, coming into the room and discovering what Lita and Serena had already figured out about the beds.

"That's the point. God, I remember when Colonel Iwasaki chewed us out for that."

"Glad he's gone now."

"Well, I wished they would have kept him in that cell for a bit longer, but oh well." Serena played with her hair; it was still shorter than before she got burnt to a crisp, but at least she still had that nice blonde hair to go along with her figure. She had most certainly lost a couple of kilos in body fat, and while that had been replaced by pure muscle, inflating the scale a bit, she was fine with that development. She wondered how the hell she was going to keep that up after getting out of this stupid military unit; maybe she would do that "crossfit" stuff people were always talking about back home. It looked hard beforehand, but after all of this, it didn't look so bad after all.

"Mina and Amy better hurry up with that chicken," Lita said, looking at her watch.

* * *

"Alright, time to get this chicken. I'm hungry, how about you?" Mina was happily driving a SUV loaned to them while they were staying at the base, much to the irritation of everyone involved (hey, these things take up a lot of paperwork!)

"Yeah…I guess."

"You okay there?" Mina swerved around some patrolling Security Forces soldiers, who gave her the finger but didn't call it in. Like hell they were going to be doing any actual work tonight. She arrived at the front gate and parked by the shoulder, waiting for the delivery guy to show up.

"I…I don't know. I'm just down all of a sudden. It's like how I felt back in Russia. I just can't shake this feeling any more. Part of me just wants to go back to Japan and never leave my mother's house. I never wanted any of this…" Amy let a couple of tears come down her cheek before she felt Mina wipe them away.

"There there," Mina said. "I…I kind of understand where you're coming from. We'll get through this, I promise you."

"Since when did you start making promises?" Amy asked, suspiciously. She did know that Mina had a way with twisting around words, and that ever since Hong Kong, and probably beforehand, that she had had feelings for her.

Mina tried to reassure her. "Right now. I promise you, we are going to bring the Nakanishi Group, Beryl, and Kunzite to justice. We can do this."

"Okay…" Amy still wasn't convinced, but put on a brave face to make Mina feel better.

"Oh, there's the delivery guy now." Mina got out of the car, along with Amy, and walked over to a man on a scooter, who was being watched suspiciously by several Security Forces officers.

"Hey, we put in the order, so don't be hatin'," Mina joked to one of them. He just glared back and shifted his M4 Carbine around. They approached the delivery guy, who pulled out a receipt and read it off to them.

"That'll be 250 Riyal," he said in broken English. It was somewhat passible, at least.

"How's this?" Amy handed over three hundred Riyal in small bills and told the delivery guy to keep the change. At first, he refused, but after some insisting from both Amy and Mina, he took the money. He needed it anyway, and who was he to judge the generosity of foreigners...yeah, right. After handing over the ridiculous amount of chicken that they had ordered, the delivery guy puttered off on his scooter, his last delivery for the night finished.

"Mmm, that smells really, really good."

"Get us back to the trailer before I eat all of this," Amy said, jokingly. Mina however, wasn't, and nearly ran over the same Security Forces people that they had passed earlier in her rush to get back with the chicken.

Five minutes later, they were in front of the trailer and running up to it, buckets of chicken in one hand, and side dishes in the other.

"Hey, we're back!" Mina yelled to the rest of the group.

"And guess what we brought!" Amy added.

The buckets of chicken filled the room with their fried goodness, and the entire SAILOR team set up paper plates and plasticware on a small table in the common area.

"Itakakimasu!" they all chanted. The fried chicken was eagerly dug into, with the only sounds of chewing and munching resounding through the trailer.

"Oh my god, this is so good," Lita said at last. "Haven't had fried chicken in such a long time."

"Mmmpphhh." Serena had a drumstick in her mouth and was trying to get several potato wedges from Raye, who wasn't having any of that. She snatched them away from her, much to her chagrin.

Amy just smiled and gave some of hers to Serena.

"Thanks. Unlike _someone_ here." She shot a glare at Raye, who cheerfully ignored her.

The fried chicken was gone in no time, but there were still some side dishes left, mainly rolls and some funky tasty coleslaw.

"Wow, that was certainly very tasty," Lita said, sitting back in her chair. Raye let out a huge belch in her approval of the meal.

"I think we're going to take off for bed," Luna said to the group. "We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and we're going to need all the rest we can get."

"Agreed."

The SAILOR team watched as the two of them walked back to their room, and then started partying again.

* * *

"This stinks."

Poor Artemis and Luna had just gotten back into in their room, but the SAILOR team was making so much noise that getting sleep was impossible. As much as partying sounded good, they really needed to get some rest if they were ever going to get in any condition to fight. Luna had halfheartedly thought of going out there again and asking politely for them to keep it down, but that was going to be a losing battle either way.

"Don't complain Artemis," Luna said to him. She put away her duffel bag filled with electronics equipment, stuffing it under the bed. For them, they would on a plane flying over the Indian Ocean for god-knows how long. It would depend on how long the mission would take, but if a stiff back and a sore bottom was the price of bringing down the Nakanishi Group, she would gladly pay it.

"Yeah…I guess I shouldn't. These girls have been through alot of shit, and I shouldn't really complain."

"Mmm."

"Well, goodnight then. See you at 0500."

"Yeah, you too."

With that, they turned out their lights, and put earplugs in to block the noise coming from the common area.

* * *

Serena, Lita and Raye all looked like they were having a good time. Raye had brought out some sake she had stashed away, and had poured out cups of it for all of them. Drinking alcohol was not the smartest decision to make before embarking on a high risk mission, but after what they had gone through (and what they were about to go through) something to take the edge off was sorely needed. Mina was having a good time, chatting happily away with Lita about baseball when she looked at Amy. Amy looked like shit; she had huge bags under her eyes, she looked wilted, tired, and completely out of energy. It wasn't that she was tired, they were all tired. It was just that the last couple of months were taking their toll on her, and right before their very last mission, it was all starting to hit Amy all at once.

Mina thought of a way to cheer up Amy. She suddenly saw her chance when she looked into their room. It still had some people in it, but she could clear them out in no time.

"Amy, come in here, I've got something to tell you." It wasn't like Amy had much of a choice, as Mina grabbed her hand and dragged her into the room.

"Okay, geez, don't pull so hard." Amy groaned and entered into the room after Mina.


	64. Chapter LXII: Ecclesiastes 4: 9–11

**Chapter LXII: Ecclesiastes 4: 9-11.**

**2300hrs, 24 December 2013, "Undisclosed Air Base", Qatar.**

_"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up."_

_"Without friendship, there is no love. Simple. Love is friendship." Rahul, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai_

* * *

Amy shut the door behind them.

"What do you want?" she asked Mina.

"Hold up a second," Mina replied. "Guys, leave." There were some airmen in the sleeping quarters; they were supposed to be reserved for the SAILOR team, but not all the airmen had gotten the hint.

"Hey, we're just getting all cleared up, you know? It's Christmas, and…"

"Get. Out." Mina hissed.

"Hey, what's your rank anyway…?" another airmen said suspiciously. They were wearing a completely different uniform than the ABUs that the airmen were wearing as well.

Mina closed her eyes, and tried not to get upset. "My rank is courtesy of Mr. Benjamin Franklin."

She held up a couple of hundred dollar bills.

"Now get out."

"Yes ma'am!" The airmen took the hundred dollar bills and immediately left.

"Too bad they're fakes," Mina said, after they had left.

"That was mean," Amy replied. "They could get in big trouble for that."

"Not my problem."

"What did you want to talk about?" Amy asked, looking around the now empty room. To her surprise, Mina turned off the lights, and they looked at each other for a little bit.

Mina stared at Amy for a little bit. She admired the petite frame of her body. Amy didn't have much body fat on her (not that having a little bit of fat was a bad thing. Being like those supermodels was most certainly not healthy), but she had certainly developed a certain toned state. Her blue hair shimmered in the dim lighting of the barracks, helped along by the half-moon outside. It would have been more romantic if it was a full one, but hey, you had to take what you could get. Amy's small breasts rose up and down with her breathing, covered up by her bra, black T-shirt and the chocolate-chip BDU blouse that she was wearing, like everyone else on the SAILOR team.

"I just wanted to say…um…"

Mina found the ideas she wanted to express difficult to put into words.

Amy looked at her strangely. "If you need help, shouldn't you talk to the medical staff?"

"That's not what I wanted to say…" Typical, always thinking with her brain and not with her heart.

"No…I love you." Mina finally said it. There was a long silence as the magnitude of Mina's words sunk in, for the two of them.

She finally said it, Amy thought. Took her long enough. Too bad that I don't really feel that way…

"Can…can we…? Just for this night?" Mina stuttered through the words, unsure of how to make her feelings known to Amy.

"What are you going on about, Mina?" Amy said, confused. "I hope you're not talking about what I think you're talking about."

"It is…" More very, very, uncomfortable silence. "Please Amy. Amy, this last year, we've been through a lot. Korea, China, Russia, Taiwan, India…Hong Kong…god, every time we've gone on a mission, I've fallen for you more and more. So please…just this time."

She started to take off her clothes, first her blouse, her pants, then her t-shirt. Amy was rooted to her spot, absolutely petrified in indecision as Mina continued to take off all of her clothes. In a few seconds, all that was left was her and some…

"Pink…?" Amy was certainly puzzled why one would wear matching pink undies and bra with those Desert Six-pattern uniforms that they were wearing.

"Hey, it's all that I had. Throw me a fucking bone here." Mina threw her arms around Amy in a comforting hug, nuzzling her face against her neck.

"Mmm." After doing that for some time, she started in on Amy's clothes.

"Your turn."

It was more like, Mina undoing Amy's clothes than her doing any actual work. She was still very unsure of what Mina was doing…maybe this was another trick or joke that she was playing or something like that. She shuddered as the last of her clothing fell away, and as Mina embraced her further, placing her hands on her waist and caressing her. Her hands sent tingles throughout Amy's body, and she flinched a little bit, trying to pull away from Mina's embrace.

"Mina…I…I can't." Amy was blushing so much so that her pale skin looked sunburnt in the dim half moonlight.

"What do you mean, 'I can't?' We've gotten this far, haven't we?"

"I…I don't know what to think."

Mina smiled at Amy's reluctance. "Just let me do most of the work. I'm experienced in these kind of matters." She took Amy's hand and guided her to a bed.

"I thought you liked guys."

"I like whatever I like, Amy. Now come over to the bed here." Mina laid on the somewhat comfortable bed (hey, it could have been worse…it could have been Army…), and let Amy get on top of her for a second, before reversing her position and sitting on top. She planted a couple of kisses on her mouth before continuing further.

"This might feel a bit odd for a newcomer," Mina winked. "Hold on."

* * *

"What are those two doing in there?" Lita, Raye, and Serena were all still in the common area, finishing up the last of the side dishes that had come with the fried chicken. Raye had brought out (appropriately) a game of Risk, and now they were taking over the world.

"Beats me," Lita said. She took a look at her position on the board. She controlled most of Europe, part of Africa, the Middle East and Asia (India). Raye was in full control of North America and part of Asia (Russia), and Serena was in control of South America, Australia and parts of Asia. Jesus, this was going to take awhile.

"I'm attacking you, Serena." She had ten pieces on India, and moved against Siam.

"I think Amy at this point, would probably come up with some sort of quote," Serena said, getting her dice ready for Lita's attack.

"Like, never fight a war in Asia?" Raye piped up. Lita rolled her dice; Six, four, two.

"Exactly like that," Serena replied, rolling her dice. Two sixes. "Hah!"

"Dammit!" Lita took two of her pieces off. Seven left. She tossed down the three dice again. Five, four, three. Serena rolled. Two, Five. One and one, which made six for the attackers and four for the defenders. It was going to be a close one, that's for sure. After a couple more rolls, Lita had won, with half her army lost, and Serena all of hers. She glared at her as she removed the pieces from Siam.

"Lady Luck seemed to be on my side today," Lita smirked.

"Fuck you, Lita." Serena rolled her eyes and looked at the clock on the wall. "Hey, it's almost Christmas day."

"Wish I were back in Japan." Raye sighed and looked out the window at the drab base. There was no snow, just miles and miles of sand, broken up only by the lights of the nearby city in the distance.

"What time are we leaving tomorrow?" Lita asked Serena, watching Raye and Serena duke it out on the board.

Serena attacked Raye in Russia, and managed to snag some territory from her. "I think it was leave here at 0700, hop a ride on a helicopter at 0800, and be on the destroyer at 1030,1100ish or something to that extent."

Raye groaned. "God, that helicopter ride is going to be a bitch. We have to go all the way around Socotra, do a midair refueling, and then land and spend a day on that destroyer. Not looking forward to it at all."

Serena eyed the board to see if there was anything else that she could possibly do. It didn't look like it, and from the looks of it, Raye would be attacking from some of the places in Russia that Serena had been unable to get during her turn. "Socotra will be even worse. We don't even know what to expect. Amy doesn't even know what's down there, and she's the one in charge of planning this entire thing."

She sighed, conceding both that Raye was going to attack her and that the mission tomorrow was going to be a clusterfuck. "Your turn, Raye."

"Oh, okay. Let's see." Raye eyed Japan. "Let's go, Serena. Gotta get you back somehow."

"Great."

Several more rolls, and Serena had actually won this round, much to the surprise of the two of them.  
"Goddamn, I wanted Japan," Raye whined.

"Too bad, get more troops next time. Let's see…" She looked down at the board, but was distracted from the game by a loud yelp from Amy and Mina's room.

"What's going on in there?" Serena said, her interest peaked now. "Sounds kinky." She was curious of course, and all sorts of dirty things were flying about in her head right now, but it would be really rude of them to barge in and gawk at someone's private and intimate moment.

"Hey, I want to see what's going on in there," Raye said in a low voice to the rest of them.

"Leave them alone, Raye," Serena ordered.

"I'm going to get Amy back for peeping at my computer back in Japan!" She had a smartphone with a video function on it, and started toward the room that Amy and Mina were in.

"Raye!" Lita hissed. She reached back with her left arm and quite brutally pulled her back onto the couch that she had been playing the game on. Raye landed with a loud thud onto her lap.

"What, you want to start into that now as well?" Raye glared. Serena puckered up her lips and mock-kissed toward Raye. She recoiled a little bit, but continued to glare in her general direction until Serena cut it out.

"Leave it be," Lita sighed, looking at the door. "I think that we should go to bed."

"Yeah, we've got a busy day ahead of us," Serena said, packing up the Risk game. "I think you won that one, Lita."

"Thanks. Hope it transfers over to our operation in Soctora."

"Yeah, me too." The three of them trudged off to their quarters.

* * *

"That was…"

"…unbelievable," Mina finished, lying beside Amy. The remainder of their undergarments were strewn on the floor, and Amy wondered how the hell she had gotten herself in this type of situation. Mina had been adamant about going through with this…act, and now she felt just odd. There wasn't anything wrong with liking the same sex, nor anything "unnatural" about it, as some idiots would claim, but this might have gotten a bit too far. They were now lying underneath the covers of the bed, breathing heavily from the last thirty minutes or so of intense…er…"aerobic" activity.

"Mmm." Mina snuggled up to Amy, wrapping her arms around her body. The room was surprisingly cold, due to the fact that they were in a desert, and deserts can get extremely cold in the nighttime. Plus, the previous occupants left the damn AC on. Oh well.

"I wish we could be like this forever," Mina whispered softly into Amy's ear. "After this is all over, and you're done with all your medical schooling…"

Amy shifted around so that she was facing Mina. "How did you know that I was going to go to med school?"

"When you extorted the PM when he came to see us," she said back.

"Oh…right." That seemed like an eternity ago. They stayed like that for a couple of minutes, with Mina caressing her short blue hair.

"Amy?"

"Yeah?"  
"You love me back too, right?"

"I…I…" Amy fumbled for the right words to say in this incredibly awkward situation. Mina just didn't seem to latch onto the fact that she just wasn't into her. The last thirty minutes, while exhilarating and physically satisfying, now felt hollow and empty. "Yeah…yeah," she said softly, trying to keep her ever increasing doubts pinned down inside of her.

"That's good to hear."

"I've got a question for you then, Mina," Amy asked. She shifted a little bit in the bed, trying to get a little bit more comfortable.

"And what would that be?" Mina replied.

"Well…why do you love me so much then?"

"Why…?" That question didn't seem to faze Mina all that much, although the response was long in coming. She fiddled with Amy's hair for a couple more seconds before formulating a response. "Why not?"

"That's not very helpful."

"Amy…" Mina whined. "Stop thinking with your head all the goddamned time." She put her hand on Amy's bosom, and guided one of Amy's hands on top of hers. "Feel this?"

"Yeah…"

"This is all that you need to know why I love you so much. Because of this bond we've created over the last six months, we are one person now. You've been there for me, and I for you."

Mina nestled her head against Amy's, and within several minutes, she was asleep, leaving Amy to ponder the situation she had found herself in, before she too, fell asleep.


	65. Chapter LXIII: All your base…

**Chapter LXIII: All your base are belong to us.**

**1500hrs, 25 December 2013, aboard the JMSDF Destroyer Murasame, off the Coast of Socotra, Yemen.**

_"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you." General Dwight D. Eisenhower._

_"AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! COMIN' AGAIN TO SAVE THE MOTHERFUCKING DAY YEAH!" Team America: World Police._

* * *

The Allied group that was sieging the Nakanishi base at Socotra was pulling out all the stops. After the debacle about a week ago, in which several ships from CTF 151 and 152 were damaged or sunk, there was no precaution that wasn't being taken.

Ships from no less than twenty nine nations were deployed there, from Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan (although they were being watched suspiciously by everyone else), Jordan, the Republic of Korea, Kuwait, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Everyone wanted a piece of these fuckers, and there was going to be hell to pay. The UN had finally come through with Security Council Resolution 2099, that stated "Reaffirming the commitments to peace and prosperity of all humanity that the Nakanishi Group singlehandedly violated in the events of 16 December 2013 to 17 December 2013, the United Nations Security Council states that immediate military action take place on the island of Socotra to end this threat, and to restore peace to the world."

In addition to the gaggle of ships deployed there, there were three carriers deployed there; one was enough to make nations quake in their boots, but three was just overkill…and a serious commitment to show "Do not fuck with the United States or you will pay." The USS _Carl Vinson,_ the USS _John C. Stennis_ and the USS _Harry Truman_ were all stationed there, with a combined air fleet of over 300 planes of all types, ranging from recon to ground support roles. The new F-35s hadn't been rolled out as of yet, due to Congressional oversight and budget cuts, but the mainstay of the US Naval Aviation, the F/A-18E/F, was still a force to be reckoned with. Woe to the person who thought older planes couldn't do damage; even if armed with old and obsolete F-4E Phantoms, a well-trained squadron of aviators could whip the most advanced plane on the market if piloted by novices.

If the carriers weren't enough, several amphibious ships from the UK, the US, Italy, India, and France were on standby, ready to offload their Marines and other assault troops. The _USS Bonhomme Richard,_ the HMS _Ocean_, the _San Grigorio_, the INS _Jalashwa_, and the _Minstral_ were all amphibious warfare ships that were capable of such a landing, and along with other reserves of Marines on the aircraft carriers, capable storming the island on a moment's notice. They even had their own air support, mostly in helicopters but the several of the ships carried Sea Harriers and AV-8B Harrier IIs, perfect for close in air support. The sheer, raw power of the combined forces there could easily wipe any opposing force off the map. Probably never since Operation Overlord had a force been assembled to take on such a problem as this.

But that wasn't for the SAILOR team. They were on a destroyer, the _Murasame_, that had escaped the massacre last week and was now placed on the very far edge of the fleet, away from the aircraft carriers. No one trusted them at this point, but this also allowed the SAILOR team to get closer to the island as well. They had been flown out via a USAF UH-60 helicopter from Al Udeid early in the morning, taking the long route around the island and refueling from a tanker, they had been landed on the destroyer. They had spent most of the day getting ready for the upcoming battle, checking their scuba equipment, and the weapons that they had been brought in on the plane that Amy and the rest of them had flown in on from Japan. There was a small selection of rifles on the destroyer, but nothing like they would need for the upcoming mission.

"These guys are really going to town," Amy noted. She had been above decks, looking at the massive fleet outside.

"What does that even mean?!" Lita asked her.

"I dunno, it's just an idiom."

She sighed. A couple of F/A-18Fs flew overhead for a recon mission, planning out how the battle would play out tomorrow.

Lita broke the brief silence. "What's going on between you and Mina?"

It was bound to come up sooner or later.

"She…she's really smitten for me," Amy hesitantly answered.

"Ah…and she told you last night?"

"Yeah."

"And…?" Lita nudged. "Eh? Eh?"

"Oh hush, it wasn't…like that."

"On the contrary, it sounded like you were having loads of fun in there," Lita smiled. "I think Raye would have snuck in there to take a video recording, but we stopped her."

"She's still a little bit sore over me cracking into her computer back at the Medical Facility?"

"Oh you haven't heard the end of it. That's all she talked about when we were on duty in China." She mocked Raye's voice. "And I'm SO going to get Amy back for looking at all of that stuff on my computer. I'm sure that SHE looks at that stuff all of the time, and…"

Amy giggled at her impression. "That's probably the worse impression I've seen anyone do."

"Hey, guys." Serena appeared behind them, already dressed in their uniform for this mission, the standard Japanese flecktarn, in a desert pattern. After some convincing (actually, no convincing was involved, Luna just told them to ditch the six pattern uniforms), they had switched out into the standard JSDF uniform, and were getting ready for the mission at hand.

"Briefing time."

Amy sighed, gave one last look at the massive fleet outside, and headed back below decks for the long session of planning.

* * *

"Alright, we're going to enter the base here." The SAILOR team was in one of the wardrooms, having kicked the poor captain out and cluttering the place up with maps, paper and equipment. Amy pointed to a submersible entrance about thirty meters down from the surface. "We don't even know what this looks like; it might be camouflaged and hidden, and we're more than likely going to have to breach the interior. That'll put the place on alert."

"So this entire mission will become one long, drawn out battle," Serena noted, frowning at the blueprints. Hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and god knows how many personnel were in there would make for an incredibly difficult and near impossible mission. There wouldn't be any time for rest in there that was for sure. Further inspection of the blueprints revealed more information, albeit not very much. Another interesting detail that had been discovered was a proposed tram system, although the SAILOR team did not know if it was actually completed or not; but it seemed like a good idea, considering the size of the island.

"That's the way it's going to look like. I don't like it, but this is something that we have to do," Amy said.

"What time are we heading from this ship again?" Lita asked. Amy had the answer immediately.

"About 0100hrs to get there about 0240. Guard times are usually at their weakest response at that point, and even with automated defenses, they still have to have actual humans patrol the fortress. Hence, our attack strategy."

"Understood. Anything else Serena?" Lita said.

Serena pondered the limited options they had set out in front of them. After about a minute, she came up with something. "Okay, as soon as we get into the submersible pen, Amy, you try to find any computers that'll allow access to the current specs on the base. It looks like there's an underground tram system that'll take us straight to the main base. Most of the tunnels in the island lead to observation posts, additional living quarters, and such, but the main base, like Amy pointed out earlier, is near the east side of the island. That's where the CIC, information warfare center, and Beryl's office is located."

"So, even though they have a bajillon kilometers worth of tunnels, most of them are useless?" Lita wondered why someone would build all of those tunnels just for them to sit empty. Unless Nakanishi was anything like the public works guys in Japan, who produced lots of roads to nowhere.

Serena continued on. "Not useless, just irrelevant to our mission. We need to secure information in the Nakanishi servers for both the Americans and our people to be used for better purposes."

"And what information would that be?" Raye asked, impatiently. She fucking hated briefings, and they sounded the same after awhile. She wanted to say, "Yes, we've been over this before, yes, going to fuck shit up, yes, we get to kill the bad guy, save the day. Can we fucking get on with it?"

Serena interrupted her thoughts on that one. Oh well.  
"Well, the healing solution, for one. There's absolutely no information about that on what we recovered from both the Nakanishi HQ or the UK servers."

"Hell, that's important enough," Raye replied. "I don't know about you, but that'll save a lot of lives."

"Raye the pacifist. Never thought I'd see the day," Lita joked to her.

"I'm not a pacifist," Raye groaned. Any day now, she thought. Can we PLEASE get this briefing over with?

"But, we have to take out their nuclear option as well. That remains our highest priority before we take out Beryl or Kunzite. However…" Serena looked extremely concerned as she started in on that part of the mission. "We have no idea where they might have those nuclear weapons."

"Those blueprints though…" Lita started to say, but was cut off by Serena shaking her head.

"Like I said before, they only show the civil side of things, and all of the military grade stuff was added on at a later date. That we don't have."

Mina tried to keep things at least somewhat optimistic. "If we get into that facility however, won't we be able to determine where those nuclear weapons are?"

"That's the hope. Amy will help tremendously on that part of the mission."

"I can't believe that our only plan for getting these stupid nuclear weapons back come down to, 'let's make shit up as we go along,'" Raye bitched.

"Raye…" Serena glared at her, but she had a massive point concerning that part of the mission. If those nuclear weapons were detonated, millions of people would die, and they would have failed in their mission. Not having a dammed clue where they were was something that had to be taken into account, and resolved quickly.

"After we've secured the nuclear weapons, wherever they might be, we will proceed to the CIC here.

"The objective remains as follows; we are to eliminate the nuclear threat, eliminate Beryl and Kunzite, retrieve any useful information on projects they were working on, and clear the way for American Special Operations or any other landing force that is to secure the facility after this."

"How are we getting out?" Lita asked, probably one of the more important questions of the day. Not having a plan to get out, well, that was not going to end well.

"The same way we got back in, hopefully. If not, we can try to find an external exit that'll lead right toward the coast, and hopefully get picked up by friendly forces."

"That's it then, hmm?" Lita asked. "Then we fly back to Japan, and go back to our lives as usual?"

"I don't think as 'usual'," Amy said. "I finally put together that media package that will tell the entire story of the SAILOR team. Luna will release it once we've communicated with her that Beryl has been killed."

Amy turned her attention to Luna. "Did we miss anything, Luna?" Artemis and Luna were still on the video call, but there really wasn't much to say.

"That's a negative," she replied. "Standby, I have an incoming transmission." She switched over the incoming transmission.

"Er…is this the SAILOR team?" An older woman sat in front of a desk, tired looking but still full of whatever she kept running on.

"Who is this? How did you get this…oh, excuse me," Luna said. "Madame President."

"Yes, it is I," POTUS said back, taking a sip of yet another cup of coffee (it was up to about liter of coffee per day, maybe more). "Please put me into contact with your team."

"Uh, understood. Standby for a second." She put the President on hold, and contacted the SAILOR team to make sure that they were ready for her.

"Heads up guys," she said to the assembled team. "The President of the United States wishes to speak to you."

"Alright, put her up then," Serena said to her. "Amy…"

"I'll translate," was her response.

"Let's do it."

It took a bit longer than expected however. "Luna, what's going on?" Serena asked her.

Luna narrowed her eyes at the monitor in front of her. "I'm having some problems with some interference, please standby."

While Luna was busy getting that fixed, POTUS bugged her with some questions about the upcoming mission. Like everyone else, she was extremely nervous about the upcoming battle, and this little unit of hers was going to be the glue that held most of the pieces together. "Ms. Luna, while we're on the subject, can you tell me about the plan that the SAILOR team has in place to assault the Socotra fortress?"

"Standby, Madame President, I'll have my associate work on this. Artemis!"

"Yeah?" He had a face full of cheese puffs, as usual.

"Put down those goddamn puffs and help clear through this interference, okay?"

"Yep, I'm on it."

Once Artemis had gotten to work, Luna turned her attention to the President. "I'm sorry about that Madame President, as you were saying?"

"What's the plan for Socotra?"

Luna looked back through the notes she had been taking while the SAILOR team had been talking. "Madame President, I believe that the SAILOR will infiltrate the fortress using a disused submersible pen, and will then attempt to recon the base, find the nuclear weapons, and eliminate Beryl and Kunzite. Further details will be added along the way."

POTUS knew exactly what that statement meant; they had been doing it all the while when most of the Joint Chiefs and most of Congress had just gotten wiped out. "So they're just making it up as they go along."  
"That would seem to be the case, Madame President," Luna said.

"Well, got to deal with what you've been given," POTUS said, smiling at Luna. Inside, she was panicking a little bit. Those nuclear weapons could kill many people, and she didn't need to imagine the consequences that would result in detonation.

"Yes, Madame President."

Artemis finally cut through the interference and managed to set up a link to the SAILOR team.

"Luna, I'm through."

"Alright, I'm patching you through now, Madame President."

A couple of seconds later, POTUS appeared on a video screen set up in the wardroom.

"Madame President, glad to have you with us," Amy said for the rest of the team.

POTUS nodded her acknowledgement. "I'll make this short, since you're heading out fairly soon, I take it."

"How do you know that again?" Amy asked suspiciously.

"Your…uh, 'Luna' told me about the plan you had in place. I think, given the circumstances, it's a good plan. Once you've secured the nuclear weapons, alert your communications officer and I'll send in the rest of the special operations teams to help secure the facility, provided you've found additional entrances to the base."

"Why can't you send in them with us?" It was Mina's turn to be suspicious.

"They would have to know about the nuclear threat beforehand, and hence, the brass as well. That would lead down a very slippery slope, and only after you've dealt with the nuclear weapons, then I can have them come in an assist you. "

"Very good then. What type of units are on standby?"

"Navy SEALs, Delta Force, Marine Recon, British SAS, French 1st Marine Parachute Regiment…but the foreign special forces units won't be in until after our guys go in first. That I can assure you."

"So, after we get the nuclear weapons, we can call for backup?" Serena asked, her English holding up. Amy was just translating for Lita and Raye, basically. Even then, they got the jist, and only had to have the more complicated phrases translated.  
"If you would like, yes." Amy couldn't tell if the President was being sarcastic or not, as in "Yes, please secure the nuclear weapons and call for reinforcements, that might be helpful in the slightest." Amy quickly stopped thinking about that and gave her response to the President.

"Of course, Madame President. Thank you for all your support and help…I know that we're not from your country, but you took a big risk backing us up here."

"Not a problem Amy. And tell Ms…Serena?"

"Yes, it's Serena."

"Tell Serena there that her English is very good. I'm glad that at least something good has come out of this awful situation."

"Thank you," Serena said. She bowed at the President's image, along with everyone else.

That humbled POTUS for a moment. These five young women were about to do what many of her best special operations operatives trained for years to do. They did it in six months. Jesus. POTUS awkwardly bowed back, trying to convey her respects to the team, although it was always in the back of her mind that they were indeed, expendable. She wasn't going to let them onto that, although she suspected that they knew that she knew…but she hoped that it wouldn't come to that. They had saved her life, and she would hopefully do all that she could for them.

"One more message, from the Prime Minister of Japan."

Unlike the President, the SAILOR team had no respect for the PM. They would only listen to him because they had to. His face popped up on the screen a couple of seconds later; he looked tired, like POTUS.

"Um…hello?" Not a good start.

"Yes, what do you want, Prime Minister?" Serena asked quite impolitely in Japanese.

"Now, that's no way to address…"

"Prime Minister, please, just get to the point," Serena interrupted. The PM looked slightly shocked, but he deserved it, after all of what he'd done. He recovered and continued on.

"Well, the President of the United States briefed me on whatever plan you've got going down there. Good luck, and I promise you we'll get this all straightened out once you get back home." The PM was slightly hunched over, and though it was barely out of shot, a flask of whisky could be seen nearby. The drunk fucker, Serena bitterly thought to herself. I'm so glad that this man allowed me to be blown up, ripping both my legs off and then made to be a corporate hitman.

"Your help is greatly appreciated," Mina said, unconvinced by his sly words. She might as well have said, "Fuck you," and gotten it over with, but they still needed to think about the aftermath when they got back to Japan and told everyone about their whereabouts.

"If you have nothing else to say, Prime Minister," Serena said to him, "Then please leave us be. We have a mission to complete."

"Of course. Good lu…" Luna terminated the transmission before he could finish.

"Thanks," Amy said to her.

"Not a problem. His government probably won't see the end of the year," Luna coldly noted.

"What do you mean by that?" Artemis asked, opening up another bag of cheese puffs. Luna glared at him, but she had her own stash of chocolate bars in her purse.

"It mean, Artemis, that when the Diet gets together again for that special session, he's going to face a vote of no confidence. He's going to get voted out, and those Liberal Democrats are going to take power. Again."

"You don't sound so happy about that."

"Just stick to communications, Artemis," Luna said, grabbing one of the chocolate bars from her purse. She needed right now, and she figured that most of them would be gone halfway through the mission. At least she wasn't down there, doing the dirty work.

"Is there anything else that you require, SAILOR team?" Luna asked.

"Negative," Serena replied. "We'll get ready then. Thanks." She terminated the communications.

* * *

"Hand me some of that ammo, will you?" Lita pointed to a box of 5.56mm ammunition that was lying on a table. She was occupied with checking her M249 Para machine gun, completely decked out in customized parts; there was an added foregrip, an ACOG sight, and a polymer stock, reducing the weight of the weapon considerably. It was still a heavy weapon coming in at ten kilos, but like most of the weapons in their arsenal, Lita could carry it with ease. She also carried a Mossburg 500 shotgun, with the stock removed and the barrel shortened so it could be easily slung across her back, allowing her to complete her tasks. On her leg was a Mk23 pistol, similar to the M1911, but updated for the twenty-first century with all the bells and whistles that soldiers in the field needed; mainly, just a flashlight and a suppressor.

"Here you go." Serena gave the box to her. Serena had her trusty M4 CQB Receiver, which was actually appropriate for this type of mission, inside the close, cramped quarters of the fortress. Attached was the standard foregrip and a red-dot sight.

Raye on the other hand, was loading up even more than Lita; she grabbed a handful of grenades and clipped them onto her tactical vest, making sure to tape over the pins so that they would not snag on any loose equipment or obstacles. She slung two LAWs over her shoulder, much to the irritation of Serena.

"Raye, why do you need those?" Amy asked, curiously. Firing anti-tank weaponry inside an enclosed area was not exactly advised.

"Just in case."

Serena glared at her. "Raye, we don't need those. So leave them."

"Fine, geez. Can I at least take the grenade launcher?"

"Yeah, you do that." Raye had her longer M16A4 with an underslung Masterkey shotgun, which would be more than enough firepower unto itself in a normal situation; however, since this was a very dangerous operation she took a South African MGL grenade launcher, a rotary type weapon that fired a 40mm grenade. In addition to that staggering amount of firepower, she had a Glock 18 strapped to her leg, with an extended magazine for those close in encounters. She also tried to stuff two bricks of C4 explosives in a rucksack, just in case they would need it for doors or something like that. They didn't seem to fit in her already crowded loadout, so she passed them off to Lita.

"Why am I carrying your explosives?" Lita glared at Raye, putting them in one of her pants pockets, along with the blasting caps, wire, and detonator.

"Don't have enough room. I'm packing enough already as it is," Raye casually replied.

"Yeah. Excuses."

Amy checked her Glock 26, her old standby. On most missions they had been on, it had provided more than enough compact firepower. But today she would need more than a dinky pistol to get through that fortress, and in addition to her pistol she packed her favorite, the MP5-PDW. Both of those weapons were not exactly useful in the era where the proliferation of body armor made survivability on the battlefield even better, but at least it worked both ways. She thought that she might take a different weapon, but this configuration had served her well in the past, and plus, she wasn't going to the heavily lifting in terms of combat. Amy was carrying several computers; her HUD, her tablet computer, and a Toughbook for actually hacking into any systems she came across. There was only so much a tablet computer could do, and having an actual laptop with lots of processing power and the ability to take weapons fire was an invaluable asset. She put them in a waterproof container, so not to get them damaged in the cold water that they would swim in to access the base; damaged computers would obviously make things a lot harder.

Mina checked her own rifle, a newly delivered HK417, a highly adaptable battle rifle, designed for the specifics of close-in, modern day combat. She had the extremely compact version, a twelve inch barrel with a collapsible stock, foregrip, 5x scope and a flashlight, just for good measure. She also had a Mossburg 500 shotgun, like Lita, just for good measure. Her Glock 26 was strapped to her leg as well.

"Guys, make sure to have suppressors for at least one of your weapons."

"Yep, I got one," Lita said, pointing to her Mk23.

There were an array of suppressors for the different variety of weapons that they were using for this final mission, from the Glock 26, MP5-PDW, the M4 CQB Receiver, M16A4, and the HK417. Even the M249 was equipped with a suppressor, ridiculously enough. Using the suppressor in close quarters would lessen the sound that the report of the gun would make, but unlike video games it would not eliminate sound altogether, hence the misleading name "Silencer". This would confuse enemies on where exactly they were being shot from until it was too late.

"Lita, you'll be the go to person for suppressed weapons when we get up there…Raye, you'll have a suppressor on your rifle as well. You two will engage any enemies first, and we'll need some surprise for that. But it'll be wise to put them on for the rest of us as well. Try to keep things as quiet as possible."

After some more weapons checks, pocketing of grenades, flashbangs, and magazines, it was time for them to get a move on.

"Does anyone need to use the bathroom?" Lita asked jokingly. Suddenly, everyone felt like they had to use the bathroom.

"Er…yeah," Raye said, slowly inching toward one of the restrooms on the ship.

"I think I might have to go as well," Mina added. She was mimicking Raye, and was also inching her way toward the bathroom. Suddenly, Raye dropped all of her stuff and made a break for it, and the rest of the SAILOR team followed suit.

"GET OUT!" Raye yelled at the crew in the bathroom. It would have been awkward under normal circumstances, but these were no ordinary times. They needed no convincing, and several sailors scrambled to get out of the way of five very anxious and angry women.

* * *

"Okay, now are we ready for this?" Serena asked the rest of the team. Everyone felt much better, and despite them being on a ship, no one felt seasick or anything like that. Amy guessed that it was probably one of the (many) aftereffects of being exposed to that healing solution. They looked completely ridiculous, armed from head to toe with weapons, ammo, grenades, electronics, and armor. One thing that they did leave behind were helmets; they were too bulky for this type of operation, and would only get in the way. Their black wetsuits glistened in the harsh fluorescent light of the ship's armory, and the air was filled with the immense tension of the mission before them.

"Yeah," said Mina. "We are." The rest of the nodded their approval.

"Let's roll." The team walked through the corridors of the destroyer to abovedecks, where they would board the RIBs.

"Ma'am." An able seaman came up to them and saluted. "All of your stuff is in RIBs."

"Thank you."

"Who are you guys anyway?" They certainly didn't look Japanese, but…

"Sorry," Mina winked at him. "That's classified information."

"Of course." The seaman went to the controls to lower the RIBs into the water. The SAILOR Team boarded into the boats, ready to start their final mission.


	66. Chapter LXIV: Flight of the Intruder

**Chapter LXIV: Flight of the Intruder**

**0240hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Victory will be ours! We shall return peace to our people. We will win back our freedom...and our future. The skies belong to everyone...Now, let us take back our "shattered skies"!" ISAF General, Ace Combat 04 Shattered Skies._

* * *

The ride in on the RIBs was incredibly uncomfortable, but at least it provided a way to actually get to the island without being detected. Serena had asked Amy to direct Lita and Raye to quickly train them in the usage of the RIB, and with a couple of hours' worth of pirated instructing videos, they had learned how to start, conn, and even make basic repairs on these types of boats. Lita and Mina were riding in the one that had the heaver equipment, and Serena, Raye and Amy were riding in the one that had more of the same.

"Fuck, that's cold," Serena complained as the sea spray blasted over their tiny boat. "This wetsuit doesn't help at all."

"At least we're wearing something underneath it," Amy replied. She tapped her HUD to see how far they were out from the coast, and to get into touch with both Artemis and Luna.

"Luna, Artemis, are you there?"

"Roger, we're here, over."

Luna and Artemis were on a P-3 Orion on loan from the US Navy, circling near the Yemeni coast in support of the operation. Right beside them, two F-15Cs from the USAF were flying escort duty, wondering what the hell these guys were up to.

"Luna, still any movement on the island?"

"That's a big negative, SAILOR Mercury," she replied.

"Roger that, out."

"Fifteen minutes from the drop point," Lita yelled out over the loud noises of the ocean and the engine.

Another voice interrupted their concentration for a second. "Dr. Kobayashi here."

"Doctor-person," Serena replied. "Nice of you to join us, in the real world for a change."

"I'm just making sure that you're doing alright. I'm not going to be with you the entire mission, since we still have much work here in cleaning up the Medical facility."

"Thanks for checking up on us," SAILOR Mars said.

"Not a problem. You're in good hands with Ms. Kitsune and Mr. Tanaka here."

"Who's…oh. Oh." Sometimes, using the nickname for such a long time made one forget the actual name of the person they were talking to.

"Well, I'll let you get back to the mission. Good luck everyone."

"Thank you Dr. Kobayashi," Amy said, and ended the transmission. "Luna, Artemis, status update on the fleet and their activities."  
"The northern section of the fleet is slated to set troops down at 0800 this morning after the southern section has softened the island up via Tomahawk missiles and air strikes. I don't know the effectiveness of their approach though. They have a vague location of the missile batteries and anti-ship launchers, but there's thousands of those launchers down there…"

"They're just going to have to tough it out," Serena said.

"That's awfully cruel of you," Mina replied over the radio.

"Well, our part is significantly more important," Serena said back.

"All of this is important," Lita butted in.

"Alright everyone," Amy cut everyone off. "Please, we must stay on the mission."

"Understood," Serena replied grudgingly. The RIBs continued on for a little bit, then started to slow down.

"Approaching the drop point. Standby for insertion." Both Lita and Raye cut their engines on the RIBs and drifted toward the spot that had been illuminated for them on their HUDs. The coastline was completely dark; there was no light, no movement, nothing that might demonstrate that there might be life of any sort on the island.

"Okay, everyone got everything?" Serena asked again, for the third or fourth fucking time.

"Yes Serena, we have everything," Raye growled at her.

"Just making sure."

"Let's do this, then." She flipped herself backward off of the RIB and into the cold water. The rest of team followed suit, splashing into the water.

The submersible pen was thirty meters down, but they had stopped about 200 meters out from the shore, which was still kind of cutting it close. At least they were in black wetsuits, and they matched the sea perfectly. They swam silently down to the submersible pen remaining silent as they slowly paddled their way toward the supposed entrance.

"I don't see anything," Serena said, finally breaking the silence. Her voice was slightly muffled as she spoke into the radio, but nonetheless intelligible. The pitch black water didn't help as well.

"Standby, I think I might see something."

Amy swam up to a group of rocks and removed some. Still nothing.

"Shit, I knew this was going to be a bad idea," Lita complained.

"Wait, just wait for a second." Serena went to where Amy was removing the rocks and shined a flashlight around to look for an entrance. Something caught her eye.

"Take a look at this," she said, pointing to a suspicious looking "reef". "Raye, check that."

"On it." Raye swam over there and tapped one of the sections of the reef with a knife.

"It's plastic."

"Uh huh, keep looking around…see if you find an entrance of any kind."

The SAILOR team started to poke around the area to find the elusive entrance. They had been underwater for about fifteen minutes now, and while they had enough air, swimming for an extended period of time was going to seriously tire them out if they didn't find the entrance soon enough.

"I've got it," Lita said, tugging on some camouflage "netting", which basically amounted to plastic debris covering a hole in the group.

"Jackpot."

"I'll take the lead," Lita volunteered.

Serena motioned to Raye.

"Raye, after her."

"Roger."

Lita and Raye swam down the hole, followed by the rest of the team.

* * *

Beep beep beep.

"What was that noise?" One of the PMC technicians took a look at his instrument panel in the Nakanishi PMC CIC. There was a surveillance camera that had detected some sort of movement on the south side of the island, near the semi-disused submersible pen. They still used it; for swimming lessons. Some people still didn't know how to swim here, believe or not.

"For fucks sake…" he groaned. The technician reached for a secure line to the security checkpoint near the submersible. "Hey, 3 Alpha 5," he said over the phone to the night patrol.

"Yeah, what's up?" was the groggily reply from 3 Alpha 5, one of the nigh patrol members.

"There's some activity near the submersible pen. I don't think it's an infiltration, but we're under orders to check out any and all possible threats, with that stupid fleet out there."

"Do you think it might be the SEALs or Delta?" 3 Alpha 5 asked nervously.

"I don't know, just make sure that there's nothing there. I'm sure it's nothing."

"Roger that Command. 3 Alpha 5, moving to the submersible pen. Out."

"Christ." The technician shook the sleepiness from his eyes, and wondered how the hell he had found himself in this sort of situation. Like most of the personnel here, he had volunteered to be here, with extra pay (up to 100,000 USD more) and benefits (a half pension after five years, a full one after ten, medical insurance, etc), but after Operation TAKE HOLD, everything had changed. A couple of people had tried to leave, only to be turned back, and even one person had been shot as an example to the rest of them. That made up most people's mind quite quickly, and those who had second thoughts decided to stay.

* * *

The five member team slowly ascended toward one of the openings where submersibles used to be dropped into the sea. Carefully, and one by one, they exited the cold sea and got up onto the dock. Lita and Raye went first, covering the room and making sure that no one was in there. Serena and Amy were next, with Mina last.

"Did we alert anyone?" Mina asked to Serena.

Serena shook her head. "I don't think so…there doesn't seem to be any guards around here."

Amy took stock of the situation. "Looks almost abandoned…almost." The submersible pen was indeed devoid of any sort of activity, but there were signs that people did come down here to clean and maintain this part of the base. A submersible was suspended over the pen that they had just come out of, and another was on the dock itself, leaning against a wall. Two more pens were in the general vicinity, but were covered up at the moment. The entire place was shrouded in darkness, with some emergency lights and other dim lamps making the place barely visible.

"Jupiter, Mars, get by the door and cover us."

"Got it." Lita and Raye hefted themselves out of the water, took off their wetsuits and scuba gear, and onto the dock. The quickly readied their weapons and kept a close watch on the door. Serena, Mina and Amy got out of their scuba gear and wetsuits as well, making sure that nothing had been damaged by the water.

"Mercury, do you see anything that could be hacked or…"

"There looks to be a computer terminal over here," Amy finished, pointing out some computers that were against the wall. They looked like they were used for running diagnostics on the submersibles.

"Check them," SAILOR Moon ordered.

"On it."

While Amy was doing that, Serena checked in with Luna.

"Luna, this is SAILOR Moon. We're in the base and preparing to move inside."

Luna could barely hear them; she tried boosting the signal with some extra power, but it really wasn't working.

"Affirmative SAILOR Moon. Have you found anything yet pertaining to the nuclear weapons?"

"Negative, but Amy's getting data about the facility now, will keep you updated. Out."

Amy went over to the series of computers and powered them on. All of them were using a somewhat modified version of Ubuntu, with some advanced computing software tacked onto it to calibrate the submersibles and whatnot. Presumably, it was meant for people who weren't so good with command line and were getting used to Linux. On the plus side, it was free, and free was always good for a corporation that was looking at the bottom line all time.

She set up her laptop and got it out of sleep mode, using the duel boot mode to load a version of the Fedora distro. Using some extra Ethernet cords, she hooked them into a hub, and then created a network between the three computers there and her own computer. They had some basic security measures, passwords, firewalls, and all that jazz, but that was easily bypassed by some security tools that allowed root access.

"Okay, I'm in," she said to Serena. Serena just nodded back and continued to look around at the submersible pen.

There wasn't much to see on the three computers, just some diagnostic software, but there was some limited access to the Nakanishi database concerning the layout of the fortress. Again, no weapons emplacements, no mention of military facilities; it was like one of those pamphlets they give out to newcomers once they arrive at a theme park or something to that extent. Still, it was better than nothing, and she quickly transferred that data over to her computer. Finding nothing else, she disconnected herself from those computers and put the Ethernet cords and hub away. SAILOR Mercury gave the thumbs up to Serena to show that she was done there.

Suddenly, Raye, who was standing by the steel double doors that lead to the rest of the facility, heard the approaching clunk of boots and the garbled chatter on a radio.

"Hey, someone's coming!" Raye hissed to the rest of team.

"Dammit, find a hiding place, quick!" Serena ordered. Everyone ran to different positions, Amy behind some stacked up barrels, Mina under a submersible, Raye and Lita next to a pile of disused air tanks, and Serena near some boxes. The door opened, revealing two guards in black camo, tactical vests and helmets.

"3 Alpha 5 to 6 Alpha 5 come in," 3 Alpha 5 said over his radio to the security checkpoint.

"Yeah, 6 Alpha 5, go ahead."

"We're in the Submersible pen. Starting our sweep now, over."

"Roger, stay safe out there. 3 Alpha 6 out."

"I hope it's not those goddamned sharks that sent off the alarm," 3 Alpha 5 said to his partner, 2 Alpha 5. Lita and Raye looked at each other, horrified to discover that they had just swam through shark infested water. That was not a fun way to go, being eaten up like that.

"Yeah, those were scary," 2 Alpha 5 said to him. "Didn't they try to put lasers on them or something to that extent?"  
"Why would anyone do that?" 3 Alpha 5 replied, checking the room by shining his flashlight (mounted on a P90) around. "I mean, really now. This place is a stereotypical evil genius as you can get. Base inside a mountain island? Check. Cackling boss with minions? Check. Weapons of…"

"Shut it," 2 Alpha 5 said to him. "You know we're not supposed to talk about those things."

"Please," 3 Alpha 5 retorted. "Everyone knows there here."

"Well, it makes me uncomfortable to think about…you know…"

"About…?"

"You know…them."

"Jesus, give it a break. You really think too much for this job." They continued their patrol around the pen, chatting away. All the while, the SAILOR team waited and watched, hoping that they would go away.

"Doesn't look like anything here," 2 Alpha 5 sighed. Yet another patrol hunting phantom ghosts. They turned to leave, heading up the middle of the room, when something caught 3 Alpha 5's attention.

"Huh, I swear that wasn't there before." 3 Alpha 5 shone his flashlight at a pile of scuba gear that the SAILOR team had carelessly left lying around after they had exited the submersible pen.

"It looks like it's still wet," 2 Alpha 5 noticed. "There's water everywhere around here."

"Jupiter, take them both out with your suppressed weapon," Serena quietly said into her radio. They had just been blown, and so they needed to neutralize the situation before it really got out of hand.

"Roger that, standby." Lita activated her HUD and targeted the two PMC soldiers poking at their discarded equipment.

3 Alpha 5 reached for his radio to call the suspicious activity in when he heard a muffled gunshot, and 2 Alpha 5 suddenly fell over into the water, blood turning it red.

"Shit," 3 Alpha 5 said to himself before a .45 round zipped into his head, and he too fell into the pen.

"Nice shooting there," Raye complimented. Lita had fired only two shots, one per person, and had managed both headshots at that, twenty five meters away. Not bad.

"Yeah. Nice." Lita had certainly done a good job, but those two kills might have been avoided if they hadn't been in such a rush. Oh well. They would have probably had to kill someone sooner or later, and now was probably the time. Serena ran over to the pen and checked the bodies there. They floated on the surface, out of sight and out of mind. The others ran over as well, with Raye and Lita keeping watch on the door that the patrol came in.

"Mercury, what was on the computer?" Serena asked her.

"I didn't get much Serena," Amy said back, tapping at her tablet computer. She had uploaded what data she had gotten from the Toughbook to her tablet, and was now looking over it very carefully.

"Wow, they really did some work on this place," she murmured.

"Well, let's have it then," Serena gestured. Amy, instead of turning the tablet computer around and having the rest of the team crowd around her, simply sent it to her HUD, and then disseminated it to the rest of the team.

"Nice. The joys of modern technology," Mina said.

"I wonder if they'll let us keep these things afterward," Lita said, poking at the interface and zooming in on their position.

"Probably not," Raye replied.

"Guys, back to the mission at hand."

"Okay. Here's the situation. This submersible pen is isolated from the rest of the base. We're located on the south side of the island. There's a tram system that we can use, with a station some hundred meters away down that hall. It will take us up to the general headquarters, which is located in the Haghier Mountains."

"Did it say how many people where here?"

"No, but there's a security station up ahead at the tram platform. We can find more information out that way."

"Alright, let's head to the security terminal."

* * *

"I haven't heard back from 3 Alpha 5 in a little bit," the technician said to one of his other companions in the command center. "Do you think it's the fleet out there?"

"What does the instruments say?"

"Well…" The technician tapped his computer monitor, which still said that 3 Alpha 5 was in the submersible pen. Why did he need to stay in there for so long…? The submersible bay was nicely isolated, but who would want to do…you know…"that" when there was a gigantic fleet outside, ready to attack this place?

"Jesus, let me contact the other guys down there." He reached for his secure phone line and dialed the command point.

At the security checkpoint near the tram terminal, 6 Alpha 5 was reading some news of the upcoming battle on his iPad, chuckling at the stupidity of the news media and their feeble attempts to try and guess what kind of firepower the island fortress possessed. The ringing of the secure phone line interrupted his musings, and he picked up the receiver to answer the phone call.

The tram terminal was not very special, with a small platform, some benches, a soda machine and that was about it. A LED display showed the timings of the tram, which transported personnel all over the island in support of Nakanishi operations.

"6 Alpha 5, this is command," the technician said over the phone to the security checkpoint.

"Yeah, go ahead command." They still tried to observe proper radio procedure on the phone sometimes, even though it was completely unnecessary; old habits died extremely hard, and it was more efficient this way…somehow.

"2 Alpha 5 and 3 Alpha 5 have not reported in for some time, can you send someone to check it out, over?"

"I'll send the rest of the squad, over." He looked at the rest of his squadmates in there; three men were playing cards on a table, next to a plastic Christmas tree.

"Roger. Command, out." They hung up the phone, leaving 6 Alpha 5 to get everyone organized.

"Hey guys," 6 Alpha 5 said to the other three soldiers. "Command lost contact with 4 Alpha and 5 Alpha, and you're going to go find them."

"Goddammit, what did Jamie and Rob get themselves into this time?" 7 Alpha 5, a lanky man from Pennsylvania groaned, putting down his cards and grabbing his SPAS-15 shotgun from a rack of guns.

"Beats me. Hope it's not D-Force or something like that," 8 Alpha 5 said to 7 Alpha 5, taking his own P90 from the rack. 8 Alpha was from Monterrey, Mexico, after doing a stint with their own Marines. Fighting the War on Drugs had been too much of a strain, and this was easy work; lots of sitting around and occasionally training from time to time.

"Nah," 9 Alpha 5, from Manchester, England, said to the rest of them, also taking his P90 off of the rack. "Those two are probably just giving each other blowjobs."

That got a chuckle from the rest of the guys.

"Okay, see you in a few," 6 Alpha 5 said to the three soldiers as they left the small office that was the checkpoint and moved toward the pen some two hundred meters away. They took their time, chatting with each other and wondering when this entire situation was going to be over with.

"I mean, I know they're Americans out there," 7 Alpha said to the other two, "But this is something different. I really don't care about those guys, I'm just doing my job here. They won't attack and this entire thing will blow over. We get paid, my grandkids get some extra money for college."

"Jesus, for how much college costs in the US, I could send my kids to university six or seven times over," 9 Alpha 5 said to 7 Alpha 5.

"Tell me about it," 8 Alpha chimed in. "I had some friends, right? They sent their kids up to San Marcos to get an education there, and they had to pull out after a semester because it was too expensive. And this was at a public school!"

"Public…school?" 9 Alpha 5 asked questionably. "How old were these friends?"

"Ah, this was at the university level," 7 Alpha 5 said. "Texas State, right?"

8 Alpha 5 nodded vigorously. "Yeah, that's the one."

9 Alpha 5 was still somewhat confused by the use of American-English idioms, and he wouldn't have much longer to contemplate that.

Seeing that his squad was getting more depleted by sending them to the pen, 6 Alpha 5 thought it prudent to ask for reinforcements, just in case this turned out to be the real deal. He rung up command, and after a moment of ringing, they answered.

"Command here," the technician said.

"Can you send another squad down here?"

He sighed. "It'll take another hour just to get them there, you know."

"That's too damn long," 6 Alpha 5 groaned.

"Sergeant, it's not my fault the tram is only set at 50 kmph. Let me talk to the other guys here and I'll see what I can do." He put 6 Alpha 5 on standby and got up from his desk.

"Ahmed, what's the status on the QRF?" he asked an Iraqi man in his early forties sitting behind a bank of computer monitors.

"Err…" Ahmed checked the status reports that flowed to him hourly from automated systems around the base. The one monitoring the QRF, or Quick Reaction Force, was marked at Green; obviously, with a massive invasion force outside, they were going to be on high alert. "They're at the ready."

"Can you send one of them down to the submersible pen?"  
"Sorenson, why would I do that? There's nothing down there besides those decrepit tubs, and plus if anyone got attacked down there, we wouldn't have the time to respond."

"But one of the on duty watchman said that he might need a squad or so. We've got a tripped alarm and I don't want anything getting past us."

That seemed to sway Ahmed to the technician's side. "Well, in this situation, you can't ever be too careful. I'll release a squad down there, but it'll take an hour at most; you know how those trams can be at times."

"I know. Thanks." The technician left Ahmed's desk and went back to his own and got 6 Alpha 5 off from standby.

"Alright, I'm getting the QRF up on standby; one of their squads will be down "shortly." There, happy?"

"Much obliged command. 6 Alpha 5, out."

* * *

"Lita, get by that door. Amy, you did bring a suppressor for that SMG?"

"Yeah, it's right here." Amy pointed at her weapon, which was suppressed.

"Stack up on the door then." Lita and Amy were on the right of the door, while Mina, Serena, and Raye were on the left side. As ridiculous as it sounded, Lita's M249 was suppressed, but that would create a more of a headache to use that machine gun. It would be like using a sledgehammer to carve ice, the results of which would not be pretty.

Lita tried the door, but noticed the keycard access port by the door. "Serena, the door looks like it's keypad access only."

"Can you bypass it?" she asked.  
Lita shrugged. She grabbed an edge of the metal door and started pulling on it. The door slid back slowly at first, then it gave way, opening up to the hallway.

* * *

"Hey, the door's opening up," 7 Alpha 5 said to the rest of his squad.

"Must be those two lovers out there." 9 Alpha 5 started jogging to up to the door. "Hey, you two! We've been worried sick…"

9 Alpha 5's head snapped back, blood flying everywhere, his body slumping to the floor. The other two members of the squad wasted no time opening fire. 7 Alpha 5 brought his SPAS-15 up to bear before a burst of fire from Amy's PDW brought him down. 8 Alpha 5 also got a couple of shots off before succumbing to a headshot from Lita's Mk23. They hadn't even hit the floor yet before the SAILOR team ran past them, trying to get to the security station before someone got the alert out.

* * *

6 Alpha 5 thought he heard some gunshots…wait, those were gunshots. Someone was using a suppressor, and though it dampened the sound considerably, the long hallway from the submersible pen to the security checkpoint carried the sound to him. Then a loud roar from the SPAS-15 that 7 Alpha 5 carried echoed down the hallway, followed by the chatter of P90s. They were answered by more gunfire from suppressed weapons, then all was silent.

6 Alpha 5 scrambled for the phone on the desk, trying to reach command. He picked up the receiver and hit the redial button and it starting ringing…once…twice…

He looked up and saw two soldiers round the corner. One pointed their M4 at him and fired, killing him instantly.

"That was a close one," Lita mumbled, taking a quick look at the security station. It was built into the wall, with several windows facing outward (one of which was shattered by Serena's M4), with a computer, TVs linked to the security cameras in the area, and some tables and chairs for the personnel who would be manning the post.

"Get on that computer!" Serena said to Amy, but she was already on it. The poor man that Serena had shot hadn't even had the time to log off, and she used that to her advantage. She accessed the personnel files, who had clearance, who was on shift, who was off-duty, etc, etc.

"I've only got military personnel," she said after a second of looking up the database that held the personnel data. "But there's only 1000 armed people on the base. I'd guess that there can't be more than another 1000 people here as well."

"So only 2000 people in total? And only 1000 of them are capable of direct combat."

"That would be correct." She tapped through more of the database. "There's also a Quick Reaction Force, which is on standby to repel any invasion of the facility."

"And about the nuclear weapons?"

"Nothing about that. I have a more detailed specs on the base though."

"Let's see."

Amy put the new blueprints up on their HUDs after transferring the data over from the computer.

"Holy shit."

"Holy shit is right," Mina added. "That's going to be one hell of a tram ride."

"From what I can tell, this tram will take us to the HQ that's located in the mountain range here." Amy focused in on the main section of the base. "That's where most of the civilian personnel are located, apparently. Most of the research and development is done here, and we can expect a lot of them to get in our way."

"Anything else?"

"Looks like the PMC is spread out over the entire island, but they've got this Quick Reaction Force, a company sized element that's on constant standby in order to react to threats."

"I'm tapping into their communications network, standby." Amy didn't need to break into the communications network when the computer in front of her had all of the data; she simply looked at more of the charts and emails that had been sent out by command concerning everything from guard schedules to when the next movie was being shown in the main entertainment area. To her surprise, they used phones instead of radios but that made sense; radios working over that large of a distance (and underground) would take an awful amount of power to use and they could be listened on to. So, they used a land line phone system in order to prevent the collection of SIGNET from outside sources. Not that it helped when someone was already inside of their base.

"Okay, I'm in their communications, standby." She started to listen in on the conversations that were occurring between the command units and their subordinates.

* * *

"Command here," the technician said over the phone that had been ringing just a second ago. There was no answer this time, and he simply put the receiver back down. If there was something wrong down there, the QRF would sort it all out. Wasn't his problem that the phones kept acting up. He went back to staring dumbly at the computer monitors in front of him.

* * *

"QRF Squad One, come in, over," Ahmed in the CIC said to the QRF people on the tram.

"Yeah, this is QRF 1," their squad leader said over the phone.

"New designation for you, 1 Foxtrot 1, over."

"Understood command. Are there any other orders at the moment?"

"Negative, investigate the submersible pen for intruders, that's all, out."

The QRF was travelling down the tram at high speed, or as fast as 50 kilometers per hour felt like anyway.  
"Okay, listen up!" 1 Foxtrot 1 said to the rest of the squad inside the cramped tram carriage. "New designations for all of us." He pointed to the person sitting closest to him. "You're 2 Foxtrot 1," he said, then pointed to the person sitting across from 2 Foxtrot 1. "You're 3 Foxtrot 1, and so on a so forth. Sound off!" The entire squad did so, without missing a beat.

"Very good. Hopefully this is just another false alarm, but with that fleet out there, we are treating every alert as a real one. I know you all are tired, but this blow over, and we can all go home with a massive bonus."

"Oorah," 2 Foxtrot 1 said to him. A former Lance Corporal, he had been medically discharged after suffering from a bad case of PTSD and asthma. Still, Marines were going to be marines after all, and he wasn't any different.

"Alright, we've got another thirty minutes until we get to the tram station at the submersible pen, but I don't want any of you dozing…"

Too late. Half the squad was napping already, and the other half was getting there. 1 Foxtrot 1 sighed and sat back down in one of the very uncomfortable chairs on the tram, and wondered if that might come back to bite them in the ass someday.

* * *

"Great, there's a squad of those QRF troopers headed in this direction," Amy said to the rest of the team.

"How long until they get here?"

"Twenty five minutes or so," Amy guessed.

"We're going to have to take them down then," Serena promptly said. The other four members looked at her, not exactly thrilled at the concept (well, maybe not Raye).

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Lita asked. "That might attract even more attention."

"I'm not quite sure if you've been paying attention," Serena replied, "But we're going to be attracting attention here no matter what we do. The only way we're going to get to the main HQ is when this tram gets here and takes us back to their base."

"And then what?" Amy asked.

"We'll just have to see when we get there," Serena glumly said. "Any questions? Because that's what we're doing."

Amy shook her head; the rest of the team followed her lead. Serena continued on with her plan of attack.

"We're going to set up a kill zone right here," Serena directed. The tram station was not very big; the platform was only about twenty five meters in length, paling in comparison to other metro systems in the world. The security station was near the only entrance to the submersible pen, and anyone coming in or out of the area would have to pass through next to that post. There was also a unisex bathroom on the other side of the station, along with some vending machines that looked out of order.

"Get that broken glass removed and the blood cleaned up," Serena ordered to Lita and Raye. "Mina, Amy, start setting up an ambush position by the vending machines and the bathroom over there.

"On it," Raye said. She found a small broom in the security station and tossed it to Lita.

"Hey, it's your favorite thing to do," she joked, before being silenced by a glare from her.

"Serena, what should I do with this guy here?" Raye asked Serena.

"Leave him there. Make it look like he's sleeping," she ordered.

"Got it." Raye crossed the man's arms over and put his head down on top of them to make it seem like he was napping on duty. It also had the added benefit of covering up the gunshots in his chest.

It took them about twenty minutes to get everything cleaned up, sopping up bloodstains with paper towels, moving the bodies to the submersible pen and dumping them where they had killed the other two members of the enemy squad, and in general, bracing themselves for the incoming PMC soldiers.

* * *

"Caution, the tram is approaching the station," a voice announced over the PA system. It was one of those automated ones in a Received Pronunciation accent, meant to soothe the tensions of irritated travelers.

"Alright, we're good to go," Mina said over her radio.

"Let's do this," Serena replied, shouldering her M4 CQB-Receiver.

* * *

1 Foxtrot 1 had started to wake the squad up, reminding them that they had a job to do. He reached for the secure phone line in the tram; radio signals would not carry the distance that they were from the CIC and plus, they didn't want to let anyone on the outside listening in.

"This is 1 Foxtrot 1, we're approaching the tram station, over."

"Roger that, exercise caution, over," Ahmed in the CIC warned. He didn't want more people to start dying on his watch.

1 Foxtrot 1 completely missed the cautionary tone in his commander's voice and shrugged it off. "Affirmative, out," was his terse reply. He hung up the phone and checked his own personal weapon, a customized M4 Benelli shotgun with holographic sight and trimmed down barrel.

The tram came to a stop, rolling ever so slowly before its doors lined up with the platform. There were two cars in the tram, which were connected together. Obviously, they weren't meant to hold a lot of people, since this was a very lightly travelled part of the base. The most that would ever come down here would be spare parts for the submersibles and some of the more adventurous people who insisted on taking swimming lessons down here, the idiots.

"4 Foxtrot 1, take your fire team and check out the submersible pen. I'll take my fire team to the security station and make sure everything is okay."

"Roger that," 4 Foxtrot 1 said, checking his P90 before moving his fire team out.

"Something's not right here," 1 Foxtrot 1 said to his fire team, looking at the security post. One of the windows was missing its glass, and the guy at the desk looked asleep.

"Cover me," 1 Foxtrot 1 said. He approached the door along with the rest of his fire team, and opened it up slowly. Other than the missing glass, there didn't seem to be anything else out of order. The man at the desk still seemed asleep.

"Fucking hell," 2 Foxtrot 1 griped.

"Hey," 2 Foxtrot 1 poked the person on duty. "Hey!"

The man slumped over in his chair; it was clear that he was dead.

"Goddammit!" It was already too late.

4 Foxtrot 1 was running down the long hallway toward the submersible pen when he noticed that there were several dark brown spots on the white tiles. It didn't look like blood…was it? Several gunshots behind him answered his question.

* * *

Mina and Amy were all set up behind the vending machines, after moving them from against the wall to slightly in front of it, they crouched down and took aim with their weapons at the entrance.

"So…" Mina whispered to Amy.

"Yeah?"  
"Fancy a snog before they come here?" she half joked, but kind of wished that they could do that right now.

Amy just looked at her. "Mina, what are you talking about?"

Mina cursed silently that some of her British English sometimes didn't translate over very well with the American English that Amy knew.

"I'm just joking," Mina said to her. "Snogging is making out."

"Oh…oh." Amy didn't seem very happy about that, even though they did have sex yesterday. Mina didn't get it; if they went all the way, then a makeout session behind some vending machines wasn't going to be a problem at all. Mina didn't bring that topic up again, since this really wasn't the time or place to start on that. The incoming tram distracted them from those thoughts, and Mina and Amy aimed their weapons down on the exiting squad of troopers.

"You see them?"

"I've got four tangos on my scope, approaching the security post" Mina whispered. "Amy, once I fire, we'll take these bastards down in one fell swoop, okay."

Amy just nodded.

Mina saw one of the soldiers move very cautiously toward the already dead man in the chair, ever so slowly approaching him and calling out if he was okay. When he found out that the man was dead, he got on his radio to alert the other team members.

"2 Foxtrot 1 to 4 Foxtrot, the guy in the security post is dead!" was the last transmission that team got out. Mina sighted in on 2 Foxtrot 1, and fired her HK417. The suppressed 7.62mm round zipped through the air and burrowed its way through his head, killing him instantly. As soon as Mina fired, Amy depressed the trigger on her MP5-PDW, taking aim at the three other soldiers in there. One of her bullets hit one in the chest, but due to his body armor, was unhurt. Not that it helped him, because Mina fired her 417 again, and killed that man with another shot to the chest. Amy aimed for another soldier's head and this time, got the shot off, with the 9mm bullet blasting through brains and bone, killing that person. They had taken down the entire four man element in a couple of seconds.

"1 Foxtrot 1 is in trouble!" 4 Foxtrot 1 said to the rest of his fire team. They turned around…and were promptly gunned down by Lita, Raye and Serena who had been hiding behind the door (again). Lita opened up the door (again), and the other two opened fire, mowing down the entire fire team where they stood.

It was all over in twenty seconds. Nine dead PMC soldiers.

"Did you get them?!" Serena said over her radio to Mina.

"Yeah, we got them," Mina said back. "They're all dead here."

"Standby up there, we'll come to you." Serena, Lita and Raye ran from their position in the submersible pen to the tram station, and rejoined with Mina and Amy.

"Anything suspicious about this tram?" Mina asked Amy, who was looking at it with suspicion.

"No…it's just interesting that a place like this would have an underground rail system. But for a place this large, it makes sense."

Serena just shrugged at Amy's observations of the train, and stepped inside of it. "Let's see where this takes us, hmm?"

She looked for a way to turn the tram on, but found no obvious way to do so.

"Uh…Amy…"

Amy had to stifle a groan. "Yes, I'm on it." Some more searching revealed a panel near the back of the second car, and a small computer that allowed for access to the power, speed, and route that the tram would take. After some more elbow grease and hacking into the computer, Amy finally got the tram to start moving toward the HQ.

"Thanks," Serena said to her.

"Yeah, you're welcome." Amy sat back in one of the chairs and closed her eyes for a second. They had been going at this nonstop for a couple of hours, and she was beyond tired. Combined with the stress of the last six months, and the events of the last two weeks had done little to help with her sleep pattern (read, there wasn't one.)

"Amy….Amy…" Mina poked her. "Wake up, you can't be sleeping on the job."

"Ugh…" Amy groaned at Mina's nagging, and tried to swipe her hand away. Mina instead, grabbed it and held on for a second, lingering at her touch.

"Awwwwww…" Lita said from the front car.

"Awwwwww…" Serena and Raye echoed. "Look at the two lovers," Raye said. "Isn't that cute?"

"Shut it, you three," Amy whined, but such was the consequences of showing PDA. Mina just smiled and embraced the added attention she was getting from the other three.

Suddenly, the tram stopped, and all the lights went out in the cabin.


	67. Chapter LXV: King's Gambit Accepted

**Chapter LXV: King's Gambit Accepted.**

**0430hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration." John Stuart Mill_

* * *

"1 Foxtrot 1, come in, over," Ahmed in the CIC was having no luck communicating with the QRF squad that had gone down to the submersible pen, and now he feared the worst. He dialed another number, this time, it was the PMC commander, Pyotr Soshkin.

He was still in bed, trying to get some shuteye after spending the last couple of weeks dealing with the fallout of attacking JTF 151 and 152, plus the massive fleet outside baying for their blood. The PMC only had 2000 effective people, and that was going be a challenge against all those ships out there.

The phone rang next to his bed, a Spartan twin mattress with completely white sheets; his room was more the same, with little to no personal effects. He didn't need any. The family that he once knew had been killed by the Chechens by a series of bombings in 1999 on apartment buildings. Since then, he had been working with various PMCs before being hired by the Nakanishi Group.

"Yeah. What is it?"

"Sir, this is Ahmed from the CIC, we have developing situation."

"What is it?" he asked groggily. This better be good.

"An alarm was tripped in the submersible pen."

You woke me for this? The PMC commander thought irritatingly. What the fuck do we pay these people for?

"What about it? There's nothing down there but broken tubs. Did you send the security team stationed there to…"

"Yes sir, and they didn't respond, so I released a squad from the QRF to go down there, and they haven't checked in on the phone network either."

Soshkin sighed and turned on the light switch next to his bed. For added irritation, the light was a fluorescent, which immediately lit up the entire room in a harsh white light. At least it got him up.

"Shut down the tram system to that area immediately," he ordered. "That'll buy us some time to see what's going on in that sector. Scramble the rest of the QRF and have a platoon secure the tram station in the main concourse in addition to the security detail there. I want the guard doubled on the WMDs in the hanger and start handing out weapons to the civvies here. It looks like the invasion is starting."

"Roger that." Ahmed issued some commands to the tram service program, and stopped the tram from going any further.

* * *

When the train stopped, all of the SAILOR team was thrown to the ground by the sudden stop. The emergency lights popped on, bathing them in a weird red glow.

"Goddammit, I knew something like this was going to happen," Amy said, tapping furiously at her tablet computer and her laptop. They were now stopped in the middle of the train tracks, with no power or any illumination of that sort. The tunnel itself was about ten meters high and ten across, and in comparison to other places with rapid transport, was not very big.

"How close are we to the station?" Serena asked her.

"Let me check…about twenty kilometers."

"That's a lot of distance to cover," Lita said, her face furrowing as she thought about the amount of walking they were going to have to do.  
"Let me get in contact with Luna, if we can," Serena told the rest of the group. "Amy, try to find some other way of getting up to that fortress." She got on the horn in order to contact Luna.

"Luna, come in, over."

On the Orion, Luna was going over some of the data that Amy had sent her about the Socotra fortress, but there really wasn't much to go over.

"I hear you SAILOR Moon. Signal is weak, but I can still hear you, over."

"Okay, they shut down our tram going to the stations, uh…please advise, over."

"Standby," Luna said to Serena. She looked up the blueprints from before, along with the new data that had been sent from Amy. Luna couldn't come up with any definite solutions at the moment, save for one.

"The only solution I can think of is to leg it up to the tram station. That will take about four hours or so," she said. "Maybe less if you run."

"Fuck," Serena hissed.

"Didn't catch that," Luna replied.

"Nevermind."

"That didn't sound good," Lita whispered to Raye, who wasn't happy at the prospect of climbing all that distance to their target. And when they got there, it would more than likely mean that the enemy would have gotten their position and shoot them on sight, if they didn't come up with some plan first.

"I can try to restart the tram, but even that might be a long shot," Amy said to Serena, after several attempts to access the Nakanishi network.

* * *

The technician, Sorenson, who had been tracking the previous group of soldiers down the in the submersible pen, had been assigned to watch over the stopped tram on the tracks, and noticed that there was a lot of radio activity coming in and out of that area.

"Sir, we're getting reports of radio traffic emanating from the stopped tram," he said to the PMC commander.

"Where is the tram stopped?" he asked.

Sorenson checked the map on his computer screen. "About halfway up the tunnel, twenty or so kilometers from our base."

"Jesus," the PMC commander swore. "I'm not going to have the QRF trek down that tunnel. They'll just be picked off." Having a close in gunfight within the confines of a subway tunnel was not something the QRF wanted to get into. The PMC commander ran the scenario through his mind on how it would go down. The QRF forces would get there after taking another tram or walking down there; either way, they would be tired and jumpy from the weeks long siege. In combat, one has to get to the scene with quickly, with the most amount of troops and equipment in order to overwhelm the other side. But this was different; both sides were operating with an incredibly limited amount of manpower. The PMC could get there fast enough, but it was better for them to choose their own battleground and let the SAILOR team impale themselves on their defenses after trekking all that way from submersible pen. Fatigued, tired, unfamiliar with the environment, outgunned, outmanned, the PMC would have the advantage in the train station. At least, that's how it played out in the PMC commander's mind.

"Where do you think they're headed?" Ahmed asked, from behind his desk, interrupting his thoughts.

"Here, dumbass," Soshkin spat, before calming back down. "They're coming here to kill all of us, and to secure the nuclear weapons."

Ahmed sighed and continued on. "What do you want us to do now?"

"What I ordered you to do earlier," he said, his calm regained. "We need to get ready for these guys."

He groaned before deciding to tell Beryl the very bad news. She was going to be extremely pissed off, and would more than likely take it out on him. Soshkin figured he might as well tell her in person. If she was going to take it out on him, might as well man up and face the consequences. He left the CIC and walked toward Beryl's room.

* * *

Beryl lived just down the hall toward the very rear of the underground facility, but there were over five different security posts (in addition to several others that had to be passed in order to get to the CIC), that guarded her own quarters. Kunzite was down there, and Zoicite would have been there as well if he hadn't gotten himself killed in Italy. Soshkin, being the PMC Commander, was not exempt from the stringent security standards, but at least they were abbreviated for him somewhat. After much ID card swiping, retinal scanning, and fingerprint analyzing, he arrived in front of Beryl's room. He simply walked in the front door after talking with her personal assistant; if you got this far, then another lock or fingerprint scanner wasn't going to stop you at this point. There was a foyer for guests and entertainment, with a couple of tables and chairs for dinner or casual drinking. He knocked on the door to her room.

"Come in," was the muffled response. Soshkin opened the door. Inside, the opulent office greeted his entrance. It wasn't a big office, but it was very well furnished. He was in the middle of the room, with a walk in closet to the right, and a little bit beyond that was her bedroom and bathroom. He had never been inside there, but he heard that an extremely comfortable bed resided in there, along with gold plated sinks and shower. He silently reminded himself that it was fortunate that they had the proper facilities to purify water, grow food, recycle the air, and in general live a comfortable (but Spartan) lifestyle. It was better than what some of the people back home had anyway. Soshkin hear the running of water in her bathroom, walked over, and knocked on the door.

"Yes, what is it?" she asked.

"Beryl, we're getting reports that the fleet outside is beginning preparations to attack the island."

Beryl, who was brushing her teeth in her bathroom, sighed and put her toothbrush down on the marble counter.

"Alright then. I'll be in the CIC in five minutes." Irritated at the interruption, she finished washing up and went to put on a pinstripe suit, specially customized for her figure at Harrods' in London.

"What do we know about the fleet out there?" she continued to say to the PMC Commander from inside her walk-in closet.

"It's significantly larger than the counter-piracy one that was stationed there before," Soshkin stated obviously.

Beryl had to stifle a groan at her PMC Commander. "I know that, give me something specific."

Soshkin looked down at the tablet computer he was carrying for specifics. "Three carrier groups from the US Navy, with over 200 airplanes at their disposal, with their escorts. Thirty ships just from the United States, and another thirty from allied nations."

That was enough to give Beryl some pause to think. It was certainly worse than she expected, but then again, nothing had really gone to plan after she had the Japanese PM develop the SAILOR team. Still, she tried to be at least a little optimistic. "Well, it looks like we've got quite a fight on our hands now, don't we?"

"They're going to be cautious after the last engagement," Soshkin continued. "I don't think we can rely on the element of surprise for this one."

"Then we're just going to have to draw them in. Simple." She looked at her suit in the mirror, admiring it in all of its glory.

There was a long pause before the PMC commander got on to the main point.

"There's another thing Beryl," he finally said. "It's the SAILOR team."

Beryl stopped buttoning up her suit. "What about them?"

"They're here. In the tunnels. We've got them stuck in a tram car about halfway up the tunnel to here, and they'll probably start walking their way up here."

Beryl breathed in deeply, trying not to get pissed off. She knew that they were coming for her, and that there was almost nothing they could do to stop them. The best they could hope for was to at least slow them down for a little bit, then maybe get them in a situation where they could be destroyed in detail.

"What preparations have you made?"

"We're getting the QRF set up in the tram station, along with activating the youma units."

"Those experimental things?"

"They're not experimental when you build five thousand of them," the PMC commander pointed out.

"Thank you, Soshkin."

* * *

She walked across the hall to the Kunzite's room, which was just as opulent, if not even more so. It was slightly bigger, but that was because it was for two people instead of just one. Like hers', it was not keypad locked, just a small lock on the door that she had the key for. She unlocked it and walked in. There was the front room, which was to be used for entertainment and reception, with several couches, a TV, a desk for the personal assistant (who never showed up), and a minibar. Going to another door beyond that, she unlocked it and let herself into his room. All the lights were off, hiding the beautiful furniture and decorations that adorned the room.

"Kunzite, stop your moping and get your ass up!" she shouted into the room.

"Go away," he grumpily responded.

"Kunzite, I get it. Zoicite is dead. There is nothing that you can do about that." Her voice echoed throughout the room, thundering about the walls and surrounding Kunzite with the words that he did not want to hear.

"You certainly showed them at the battle last week, so why not do it again this time?"

There was still no movement.

Beryl hit the light switch on the wall, which instantly brightened the entire room. His bed was a complete mess, with the sheets and pillows everywhere. Kunzite stirred, but ignored the looming presence in his room.

"Come on, Kunzite, time for battle," Beryl cajoled, trying a different persuasion tactic.

"Why should I?" Kunzite said back.

"Maybe because they'll kill us once they get in here."

"Who?"

"The SAILOR team."

"They're here?" Kunzite slowly sat up.

"Yes, they're here, but it'll take them some time in order to reach us. In the meantime, it's up to us to stop the fleet outside from interfering with our operations inside here."

That seemed to get him up and moving. The desire to have some sort of revenge on the SAILOR team motivated him to serve Beryl for one last fight, one last stand against the forces arrayed against them. They were beyond good or evil at this point; it was just all power politics at this point, with one force acting against another one.

"I'm getting up." Kunzite got up from his bed and grabbed a white shirt hanging from a chair near his bed.

"Good boy," Beryl muttered under her breath. "Join me in the CIC once you've cleaned yourself up here. And get a new shirt from the closet."

Kunzite looked at the shirt that he was holding in his hands, sighed, and dropped it back on the chair. He walked toward the closet, giving Beryl a dirty look, but complied nonetheless.

"I'll see you then."

* * *

The PMC commander had made his way from the exclusive living quarters to one of the armories, where there was much activity going on.

"Come on, come on! Get those missiles loaded onto the launchers and prep the magazines!" A couple of civilian employees ran about, loading gingerly Exocet missiles onto anti-ship launchers, while others loaded Crotale anti-aircraft missiles another other launchers.

"What is the status on those naval guns?" Soshkin asked one of the technicians, walking around the place and inspecting the work of the crew.

"Sir, the 57 mike mikes are all ready to go, and the 100 mike mikes will be online within the hour."

"And the ECM system?"

The technician poked at some of the icons on his tablet computer. "Powered and ready to go once they start engaging the main island."

The PMC Commander took stock of the situation; hundreds of missiles were being shipped around the island to their respective launchers, shells loaded for the different guns, fuel being prepped for…well, that would come later in the battle. He had never seen this amount of materiel when he was in the Russian Military. He had not known the old Soviet one, only the rusting weapons and tanks that they trained (and sometimes fought) with. "Goddamn, this is a lot of firepower."

The technician had an answer for that. "I don't know how much good it will do against all of those ships out there if they don't come within range." The fleet had been staying well outside the engagement range of the Exocet and Harpoon missiles, and it would be probably late in the upcoming battle when they moved to within engagement range of their missiles.

Soshkin shrugged at that. There wasn't much they could do about the movements of the fleet, being a stationary island and all. He switched topics.

"What's the update on the power plants?"

More poking at the tablet computer. "The nuclear generators are operating at sixty percent capacity, and we expect to increase that to ninety percent with all the gunnery systems online and the CIC operating at full capacity."

"Very good. I've got to get back to the CIC and with Beryl, but you keep me updated on everything. And I mean everything. Understood."

"Understood."

Soshkin turned to leave, before turning back to the technician one last time.

"One more thing, we've got possible intruders in the base, so make sure that you're on your toes."

That took the technician by surprise. "Who are they?"

"Don't matter, we have the situation under control, but if they get here…well, let's say it won't be good. Stay frosty, okay?"

The technician nodded. "Got it."

* * *

"Any century now, Amy," Raye bitched at the blue-haired girl.

"I'm doing my best," she stoically said back.

She tapped out more commands on her tablet computer, but Amy just couldn't break through the encryption on the Nakanishi computers. It was just too dammed difficult, especially when the first thing that was required to access the system was a one-hundred thousand character password, and brute forcing that one was not going to fly with the rest of the team.

"How are you going to find one-hundred thousand characters to put into that little password box thingie?" Mina asked Amy, who was trying to concentrate.

"Mina, I don't know, I'm trying to find a way to bypass the security, but it's not working out right now." She furiously typed away, but there was just too much encryption. It didn't help that the other members of the team were on her case about getting the tram started again. "I think the best option for us right now is to just start walking."

"Agreed," Serena said. "As much as I hate to admit it, we need to get a move on if we're to reach the main facility up…there." She didn't really have much of an idea what that part of the fortress looked like, let alone where it really was in conjunction with the island's geography. All that she knew concretely was that the main part of the fortress was down this tunnel, and they were going to get there one way of the other.

"Come on you guys. Hold your position." Serena looked around for anything that might provide a likely ambush point. The tunnel itself wasn't anything special, but there didn't seem to be any maintenance tunnels on the sides, like there usually were in the Tokyo subway system.

"Lita, Raye, on point. Make sure that there's no surprises up ahead," she ordered.

"Oh yes, we get to be the first ones shot at. Lucky me," Raye groaned.

"Well, at least you've got the firepower to handle yourself," Lita said. "Plus, I thought that you liked getting shot at anyway."

"Ha, ha, very funny Lita," Raye shot back.

"Guys, focus up there," Serena said, bringing them back onto topic. Raye and Lita rolled their eyes, but complied with the order.

"Any more progress…" Serena started to ask.

"I'm doing the best I can," was the repeated response from Amy. It was getting more and more aggravating, trying to break the encryption. "Doesn't matter how many times you ask me, it's only going to get on my nerves more," she muttered. After five more minutes, she was no closer to restarting the tram or getting power to their part of the woods.

"Serena, I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do from here," Amy sheepishly reported to her. She cracked her knuckles; all that typing made her hands hurt.

Serena nodded her acknowledgement. "Alright everyone, get moving."

Reluctantly, the SAILOR team started to trudge along the tracks up toward the main part of the fortress, leaving the tram car behind. What lay in front of them, they did not know. They would soon find out.


	68. Chapter LXVI: The Battle of Socotra

**Chapter LXVI: The Battle of Socotra**

**0700hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar." Wash, Serenity._

* * *

"Uh, Shark 4-6, this is Shark 4-2, we're coming off of your port side, break. Continuing to patrol area around the AO, over."

"Roger that Shark 4-2. Out." Shark 4-6, along with the flight of three other F/A-18s had just taken off from the USS _Carl Vinson_; Several dozen F/A-18s were up in the air now, having been launched from their carriers some eighty nautical miles from Socotra. Since the F/A-18 was a multirole aircraft, most of them had been configured for a ground attack mission but some were equipped with an air superiority role in mind, with Sidewinders, jamming pods, and other equipment that would aid in defeating airborne foes. Not that they expected any air assaults from the island, but after the nasty attack last week, no one could be sure of anything nowadays.

"Man, that's a lot of planes," Shark 4-2's WSO said to the aviator of his aircraft. Swarms of F/A-18s and Harriers loaded for CAS flew past at 15000 feet above the ocean surface, heading toward the island of Socotra. "Hope that they kick ass today."

Shark 4-3's WSO, a nice kid from Kansas, chimed in with his two cents as well. "And, there's going to be A-10s, AC-130s, F-15Es from the Air Force, plus the naval bombardment…man, nothing is going to be left on that island once we've had our way with it," he said with glee.

His aviator however, a feisty redhead from Illinois was not as optimistic as her WSO. "I can't believe we're stuck flying air interdiction. There's nothing to interdict!"

"Stow the chatter," Shark 4-6 ordered. "We'll get our chance, trust me." The flight continued to accelerate to their cruising speed, then leveled off at 15000 feet and contacted the resident E-3 Sentry AWACS plane that had been rushed to the area to support the operation. A JSTARS plane would also be in the region within a couple of hours, having just refueled at the "Undisclosed Air Base" and booking it as fast as it could to support the ground operations.

"AWACS, this is Shark 4-6," he said to the AWACS that had been loitering in the area for the last three hours or so. "Any sign of enemy activity, over?"

"Negative Shark 4-6, continue attack pattern toward Socotra and enter into a holding pattern for friendly forces."

Across from the operator, another airman was directing USAF planes toward the island. One of the squadrons involved in the fight was the 27th Fighter Squadron, 1st Operations Group, 1st Fighter Wing; they flew the vaunted F-22As that were all but invincible in the skies. They were coming from Djibouti after…well, like much of the assists in the area, had been quickly rushed in from the states to fight the upcoming battle.

"Warwolf flight, head on vector 130 and link up with Shark 4-6 for air superiority mission over Socotra."

"Roger that, AWACS," "Mobius," the flight lead of the flight said to the AWACS controller. "Wardog, Garuda, Cipher, follow my lead."

"Gotcha boss," Garuda said to him. The planes banked toward their assigned route and took it steady to where they were going to fly a patrol. It took about an hour to get there.

"Hey, Garuda, see anything yet?" Mobius asked his wingman.

Garuda looked at his instruments. "That's a negative, just the Navy pukes, over."

"I heard that!" One of the F/A-18 planes flew up beside the F-22s and waggled its wings.

"Hi there, Navy," was the cool response from Wardog. "Glad of you to join us."  
"Same to you, Air Force," Shark 4-6 said to them.

"Glad to see we have the Navy to back us up," Garuda said them.

"Excuse me?" was the response from Shark 4-6. "I think we're glad to have the Air Force back us up."

"No, you're backing US up," Wardog snapped.

"Wardog, there ain't gonna be no Flankers around here," Shark 4-6 joked. "And you're not flying no 'hogs today, so you're gonna spend the next five hours loitering out while Navy gets all the glory."

Wardog shot back a response, irritated at the Navy aviators. "Hey, you're doing the same thing we are, so I don't see what you're so happy about,"

"If I can't get some action, then you're not either," was the smug response from Shark 4-6.

"Can it you guys," Mobius calmly said. "Action or no action, we patrol this sector until we are ordered to RTB. Understood? And at least this part of the mission IS mostly Air Force and YOU have been placed under our command. Let's just stay focused on the mission, okay?"

"Yes sir," Shark 4-6 grumbled. The two flights continued their patrol, staring blankly into the sky and at their instrument panels.

* * *

On the AWACS plane however, things were a bit different.

One of the AWACS radar operator had to blink twice to make sure what he was seeing was correct.

"Sir…sir, we've got several thousand contacts on the scope." He motioned to the CO in charge of the crew.

"Show me."

There were so many contacts on the radar that they all blended together, forming a huge blob.

"That can't be right," the CO said. "Check the system and make sure to boost the ECCM power."

"Yes, sir." The operator did so, and the amount of contacts dropped off significantly, just to one blip on the screen.

"Huh, looks like it's just one aircraft," he said. "Ours? Theirs? Drones perhaps? What does the IFF say?"

The operator looked at a reference guide to the possible aircraft in the area at this time of day. "IFF is coming back…iffy sir. Says they're a civilian aircraft out of Yemen."

"I guess that can't be too bad. But there was nothing in the intelligence that said that anything about any other aircraft in this area. Vector some of the air superiority fighters in to deal with the threat. Hopefully it's just a lost airliner and nothing else."

"Got it." The controller switched frequencies and got into contact with the two flights of planes. "Mobius, Shark 4-6, new mission orders."

"Finally," Shark 4-6 muttered. "Go ahead AWACS."

"Warwolf, Shark flights, unknown civilian contact approaching the main body of the ground-attack craft at vector 180, speed, two three zero knots, altitude angels ten. Turn to vector 050 and make visual inspection."

"And if we're fired upon?" Warwolf was not going to be caught in a position where he was shot down because a mistake AWACS made.

"Unlikely, Warwolf, but you are cleared to use whatever mean necessary to defend yourself and the CAS mission. Over."

"Copy. Out."

"Gentlemen," Shark 4-6 started to say before he was interrupted by Wardog.

"And ladies."

"Gentlemen, ladies. Let's go see what's up." Warwolf and Shark flights hit their afterburners and moved to the location that they had pointed in. Five minutes later, they were closing in on the contact. It came up on their radar screens way before they made visual contact, and the IFF signal was the same; a civilian aircraft, a small prop engine plane out of one of the small airports in the region. But what was a plane like that doing all the way out here?

"These planes don't have radar," Shark 4-6 answered. "So they have to depend on ground control to guide them from place to place."

"Still, it doesn't explain what the hell it's doing all the way out here. I'm going in for a closer look."

Mobius rolled his plane into a short dive and took it down to where the contact was showing up. The dot on the horizon got closer…closer…what was that?

"AWACS, it looks like it's a Reaper drone," Mobius reported, somewhat confused. "IFF is saying that it's a civilian aircraft."

"What?" The CO turned to the radar operator. "Do we have any drones out there today?"

"Yeah, but not that far away from Socotra," was the response.  
"I'll get the comm officer to figure out what the hell is going on here," the CO groaned. Jesus, this was turning out to be some day. The CO figured that he'd call it in to the brass, just to keep all his bases covered on this on.

"This is the AWACS Skyeye to USAFCENT, we have possible airborne contact at 30 miles inside the AO, approaching the main CAS force some fifty or so miles from the island. It appears to be an airborne drone. Are there any CIA or other operators of drones that are operating today? No? Thanks."

He put down the secure line, still confused. Then it hit him.

"Shoot that drone down NOW!" he ordered loudly at the communications operator. She didn't even think to argue, just carried out the order and relayed a quick message to Warwolf and Shark flights.

"Warwolf and Shark flights, you are ordered to shoot down the down."

"Roger!" Mobius toggled his guns and fired a short burst that shattered the drone, sending the bits and pieces of it spiraling down toward the sea. "Splash one drone…thingy."

"Does that count as a kill?" Cipher asked. "I mean, it's a drone and all, but it's still a flying plane."

"Maybe three-fifths of a kill?" Garuda added.

"We'll debate it when we get back to base tonight," Mobius firmly resolved. It would be nice if it counted as a kill, but it was a hollow one. No super maneuverable, high g turns, no missile locks, no nothing. Just a press of a button, and another robotic plane was killed. Nothing to it.

* * *

"Well, they're probably wondering why a drone is out there," the PMC commander said to Beryl and Jadeite.

"Send in the advance waves of drones to make up their minds," Beryl ordered.

"Of course." He gave a series of orders to the several drone operators in the room, who then maneuvered their own "squadrons" of drones to attack position.

* * *

"Missile lock!" Shark 4-3 screamed out before her plane was obliterated by a Sidewinder missile.

"Fuck!" Shark 4-2 cursed, but there was no time to mourn right now. The two flights of planes broke and executed a series of high g turns, loops and brakes that would try to throw off whoever the hell was shooting at them.

"This is Shark 4-2, we are under attack by unknown forces! Shark 4-3 is hit and is down!" He looked around in his cockpit to see where the missile had come from. "Bobby, do you have ANY contacts?"

"Negative! No contacts!" The WSO narrowed his eyes and looked at the radar screen again. "Wait…something faint…"

"What is it?!" Shark 4-6 banked into an Immelmann turn to try to throw the radar lock off.

"Sir, one hundred…no, two hundred…no…three…shit! There's too many contacts!"

"What do you mean?!" Shark 4-6 looked at his screen and saw that the entirety of it was now cluttered with hundreds upon hundreds of unknown contacts. "The fuck…?" He then whipped his head up and saw what they were fighting against.

At about fifteen thousand feet, there were what looked to be small, flying wings. They almost looked like miniature B-2s, except a bit more fat on the top. But the distinctive shape of the plane, coupled with its size meant only one thing; this wasn't just a UAV. This was an autonomous, UCAV drone capable of taking out targets in air to air combat.

"AWACS, we have contact with enemy UCAVs!" Shark 4-6 screamed into his radio. "All flights, prepared to engage the fuckers!"

Mobius and his flight were not about to disagree with him. "Bandits at angels fifteen, break right and engage at will, engage at will." The F-22s screamed upward toward the UCAVs.

"Sir, I'm getting over three hundred contacts on the scope!" Cipher said, trying not to get panicked at the revelation.

"Don't worry about that, we've got these guys!" Mobius armed his AMRAAM missile and got a good tone immediately. "Fox three! Fox three!" He fired off one at the nearest UCAV and banked away, looking for the next target and absentmindedly remembering that the brevity code was "Maddog," not "Fox Three", for that kind of missile launch. The UCAV immediately went into a series of preprogrammed loops and dives, but could not get away from the missile. The AMRAAM detonated a couple of meters before the UCAV, and it blew up in a spectacular fashion.

"What about the fleet?!" Shark 4-4 yelled out, trying to shake off another UCAV on his left.  
"Huh?" was the distracted response from Shark 4-2.  
"Somebody contact the Vinson and tell them that they have UCAVs!"

"Shit." Shark 4-2's WSO got on the horn and tried to radio the Vinson, but nothing was getting through. "Sir, I'm not getting any response whatsoever from the Vinson, or any of the other ships in the fleet."

"AWACS, are you relaying the information to the fleet?"  
There was a slight delay in the transmission, and when the AWACS replied, they were extremely hard to hear. "Affirmative, but we are running into major communications problems with ECM and jamming from the island."

"Dammit!" Shark 4-2 cursed and went looking for another UCAV, which was promptly shot down in a three second burst from his gun. Around them, the seven planes fought to survive, shooting down many drones in the process.

"Garuda, three more on your six!" Cipher yelled out over his radio.

"I can't see them!" Garuda shouted back. He looked frantically over his shoulder to try to get a visual on them, but flying a complex, multi-million plane was taking up much of his concentration.

"Gotcha covered!" Wardog hit the airbrake and did a Pugachev Cobra to get the chasing UCAVs off her tail, and went after Garuda.

"Can't shake em!" he said, somewhat more nervous. One of the UCAVs lined up for a missile strike, leveling off and keeping the F-22 in its sights.

"Not today, you don't." Wardog fired three one second bursts and downed three UCAVs in a row, one right after the other. They exploded dramatically, their debris tumbling down toward the sea below.

* * *

"Sir, more contacts!" The operator was having trouble keeping everything together, there were so many blips on the screen. This wasn't a false read like last time; there were just that many targets in the air. They also faded in and out, presumably due to their semi-stealth like nature.

"Jesus Christ, where are they headed?" That question from the CO was a redundant one; he knew that they were heading toward the southern fleet.

The operator made a quick calculation. "Toward the southern fleet!"

"Where is the air support?" the CO asked him.

"Most of the air interdiction fighters are barely hanging in there, on the southwest and the southeast of the island. The majority of these contacts are coming due south and are completely bypassing the rest of the air cover."

"What about the CAS flights?" the CO asked.  
"They're not equipped for air to air combat sir, and if we ask them to engage…"

"…they'll have to drop most of their close in ordinance and it'll go to waste. Shit." He briefly pondered that solution before deciding against that course of action. They needed to attack that island, come hell or high water.

The CO quickly dialed a secure connection to COMUSNAVCENT to tell them the bad news, but for some reason, everything was going to shit in terms of communication. The connection from their plane to USNAVCENT was not getting through; there was so much jamming and ECMs that a call was impossible to get through. The CO then tried to get into contact with USAFCOM, the USAF regional command; that seemed to do the trick. From USAFCOM, it was relayed to USNAVCENT and then to the entire fleet at sea. But the message barely reached the fleet when things went from bad to worse.

There was still some air cover in the region, and intel had said nothing about air to air capabilities of the Nakanishi Group on Socotra. SAMs? More than likely. But planes? Nope.

"Contacts bearing at 010, speed, 200 knots, altitude 15000 feet, range 50 nautical miles," a radar operator in the CIC of the USS _Carl Vinson_ announced.

"Oh no you don't," one of the officers in the _Carl Vinson's_ CIC muttered. Everyone had read Red Storm Rising, and they weren't going to fall for that one. They would have the CAP close in and visually inspect whatever these contacts were. Drones, more or less, was everyone's guess. Nice try, but they weren't going to fall for that one.

"Admiral, the main group of CAS aircraft are ten minutes away from the island," a radar operator said to COMUSNAVCENT.

"Thank you. Direct the CAP to intercept unknown contacts and see what they are."

Several officers gave orders over their radios to different flights, and soon, after some repeats and calls for signal strength, their blips on the radar screen headed in toward the unknown contacts. One of the radio operators suddenly received a transmission, broken up by static and fading in and out.

"Say again Shark 4-2, you are breaking up." Whatever they were saying, she couldn't make it out.

"…contact…engage…"

"Say again Shark 4-2, you are not transmitting well," was the request.

"….down…hostile…"

The operator finally got the hint, and relayed the information to COMUSNAVCENT behind her. "Admiral, one of our planes says he ran into something, but I can't make it out."

Another radio transmissions from one of the CAP planes blurted out from their radio, this time, making it very clear what going on. "This is Raven 3-4, we have contact!"

"Say again, Raven 3-4, what contacts?"

"Enemy UCAVs! They got Raven 3-2 and 3-1 and are making…!" The radio transmission cut out.

"Sir, Raven flight completely disappeared from the scope," the technician said.

COMUSNAVCENT quickly issued orders, hoping that the threat that had destroyed Raven flight wasn't going to get the rest of them. "All ships in the fleet, prepare for contact with hostile aircraft."

Ships all across the fleet fired up their radars and weapons systems, ready to engage the incoming threats.

* * *

Back with Warwolf flight, things were going from bad to worse. A flight of UCAV lined up behind Cipher and ripple fired a couple of Sparrow missiles, homing on his plane.

Mobius saw the missiles and screamed out a warning over the radio. "Cipher, missile at your six!" Cipher jinked to the right, trying to throw off the semi-active missiles.

Too late. A missile detonated at his right wing and took it completely off. The others zipped by and exploded harmlessly in the air.

Cipher took a look out to his three o'clock and immediately saw the damage; you didn't need instruments to tell you that you were in a world of hurt as of this moment. "Shit! I've lost my right wing! I'm getting out of here!" He started toward the Yemeni coast.

Mobius tried to wave him off of that course of action. "Negative, bail out!"

"I can make it back to base, just get those stupid UCAVs!" Cipher flew off toward the west, looking for the nearest friendly airbase, smoke trailing from his engines and sparking electronics from what used to be his right wing.

"Damn," Mobius hissed. "AWACS, Cipher's down, where the hell are the reinforcements?"  
"Negative on the reinforcements, there are thousands of these drones all over the place and…" He was interrupted by one of the radar operators.

"Colonel! Contact at our two o'clock!"

"Where?!"

"Five miles out!" That was WAY too close for comfort, especially for a large plane such as the E-3 Sentry.

"Get us out of here!" the Colonel yelled at the crew, but the aircraft crew flying the E-3 Sentry needed no encouragement in trying to get away.

"All callsigns, we are going dark, are under attack. You are on your own," was the CO's broadcast to the rest of the aircraft in the area.

"At Vector 085, twenty bandits at angels twelve, speed, 190 knots, range, five miles." That was the last directions the AWACS gave out before switching off their radar and going into an evasive pattern.

The E-3 Sentry dove toward the sea, spitting out flares and chaff as the flight of F-16Cs protecting it moved to engage the approaching drones.

"Jester, Jester, engaging, engaging!" The flight protecting the E-3 was named Jester Flight, since their leader was known to play practical jokes on occasion. Not today, however.

Jester 5-1 yelled out as he toggled for a missile lock. He got it, and fired off a Sidewinder.

"Fox Two! Fox Two!"

"Missile hit! Good Kill!" Jester 5-2 and 5-3 moved in close and engaged with guns, killing two more UCAVs. "Nice kill!" was the reply from Jester 5-4, who was just coming up from his assigned station.

It was the drones' turn now, and they volleyed off several unknown types of missiles. Jester 5-3 was destroyed, but ejected in time to get out. Surviving down there, in the hostile sea however, was going to be another issue.

"Goddammit!" Jester 5-1 screamed out. "Get these guys!" Moving quickly, the three remaining F-16s of Jester flight fired fifteen more Sidewinders as fast as they could acquire and engage their targets. It was all that they had. Ten more drones spiraled into the sea. Six to go.

"Jester 5-4, Guns guns guns!" The UCAVs seemed to like to fly in groups of three or four, close together at about five or so meters apart (this was possible because…well, they were computerized drones after all), which made for easier navigation and attack runs, but also made them extremely vulnerable. Jester 5-4 got all of them in one pass and sent all of them up in smoke.

Three down, three to go. Jester 5-1 and 5-2 both finished off the last group with a hail of 20mm shells blotting the UCAVs out of the sky.

"Jesus…AWACS. AWACS, come in," Jester 5-1 said. "Where is your position, over?"

"This is AWACS, we're fifteen miles away from your position, bearing at 175."

"All drones have been eliminated. Jester 5-3 has been hit, but I saw a chute. Need a CSAR bird out here."

"That's a negative, all available CSAR elements are currently engaged in other operations right now. If he has his beacon, then Jester 5-3 will be found. Is that Understood?"

"Understood AWACS." Jester flight regrouped on the AWACS and kept a lookout for any more attacking planes, hoping that their buddy would be found by CSAR.

"For fucks sake, how the HELL did those drones sneak up on us like that!" The CO was beyond pissed right now, and a fourth of his air cover was now gone, destroyed by that surprise drone attack.

The radar operators shrugged, not understanding how that could have happened either. "Sir, I don't know how they did that, but those drones are small enough to evade our radar search pattern. Perhaps they also have stealth capabilities."

"And maybe the FUCKING fairy godmother transported them here. Watch those radar scopes closely and I don't want ANYTHING else like that happening. Understand?"

"Yes sir!"

That order was quickly shot down by several desperate calls from the fleet. "AWACS, where were you?! We're under attack!" a naval captain yelled out over the radio.

"Ah shit."

* * *

The ships in the massive fleet had started off well enough. Aegis cruisers started to attack the drones, downing them by the dozen. The remaining air cover that had survived the initial attack by the UCAVs reformed and plowed into them, downing more of them and protecting most of the CAS mission.

"Looks like _Churchill _and the _Ross_ just swiped a couple of dozen drones off the radar," the captain of the USS Vinson said to the overall commander of the fleet, COMUSNAVCENT who had flown out from Bahrain.

"They're coming in pretty fast," COMUSNAVCENT narrowed his beady eyes at the multiple radar screens. "Do you think we can take them all?"

"Yes, even with the air cover engaged, we should still be able to go ahead with the landing…" a staff officer started to say, before being interrupted by a radar operator.

"New contacts, bearing 045!"

"What?!" COMUSNAVCENT looked at the radar screens again and saw over a thousand different contacts, missiles, planes, UCAVs, UAVs, all of them were cluttering up the radar screen. Most of the operators in the room were hard-pressed to keep up with the deluge of information.

"How the hell did they get past our defenses?!" COMUSNAVCENT asked, sweat rolling down his forehead. He wiped it away with a handkerchief, the cold air in the CIC chilling the sweat almost instantly.  
"While our air cover was engaged and our missile cruisers were taking the higher flying drones, a group of them snuck in under our radar coverage and fired off some missiles, sir!"

The hundred or so Reaper UAVs were armed with Hellfire missiles, and while not designed to take down a ship, they still could do some serious damage and were not to be taken lightly.

"Vampire, Vampire, Vampire!"

A barrage of RIM-66 missiles flew off the rails of multiple destroyers and headed toward the new group of UAVs, but they weren't going to make it time.

"More contacts! From the island, at bearing 030…incoming missiles! Vampire!"

It sounded more like something out of that Twilight series than a major naval engagement, but the entire fleet was being overwhelmed with UCAVs, UAVs and shore launched missiles. Thousands of missiles zipped through the air. COMUSNAVCENT was helpless to do anything but watch the blips on the radar screen come in closer and closer; Aegis cruisers started picking off most of the missiles, but there were only so many missiles that they could carry, and only a few missiles had to make it in to some major damage. It was a deadly waiting game; the massive amount of blips disappeared off the screen one by one as the Aegis cruisers engaged their targets. By the time they had reached the fleet, eighty two percent of the missiles had been destroyed. Five percent went off course due to faulty wiring, guidance, chaff, flares, etc. Three percent were blown out of the air by CIWS. That left only ten percent of the missiles; but that was all it took.

Several ships were hit. It was inevitable at this point, but being hit did not mean sunk; it just meant that the problems you faced become ever more increasing in difficulty until you had to abandon the ship. Many different factors were involved; how well your crew was trained in damage control, firefighting techniques, first aid, not to mention their fatigue, general wellness, morale, experience…all of these factors combined would make or quite literally, break a ship and her crew.

The USS _Bunker Hill_ took a missile to the bow and took on some water before damage control took care of that problem. In response, it kept firing its vertical launch system, RIM-66s and Tomahawks screaming out of the launchers toward the missiles and the island itself. Its sister ship, the USS _Lake Champlain_, was not so lucky. It took five or so missile hits, rendering it dead in the water. Smoke billowed from holes in the starboard side, and the bridge was completely gone, along with her captain and most of her officers. The USS _Rentz_, an older _Oliver Hazard Perry_ Class of missile frigates, suffered an even more unfortunate fate; three Harpoon missiles hit her bridge, stern and bow, effectively sinking the ship with most of the crew lost. A lucky Exocet missile found its way through the protective web of air defenses and hit the _Harry Truman_, but the large aircraft carrier could take punishment like that, and damage control easily repaired the hole that the small missile had created. Other ships took near misses hits; the USS _Higgins, Gridley _and _Stockdale_ all were rocked by several explosions, enough to riddle their abovedecks with deadly shrapnel and disrupt their radar and communications.

Other ships from allied nations were hit as well; the Russian _Slava_ class cruiser, the _Varyag_, was hit by several missiles, but kept going. The recent overhaul of her systems kept the old ship together, and it powered through the missiles, firing off ones of her own. The _Varyag_ was armed to the teeth with 9K33 Osa missiles, S-300 SAMs, and six AK-630 CIWS, the latter filling the air with their 30mm rounds, blotting out missiles and UAVs alike in a desperate attempt to stop all the firepower being thrown at it.

The ships retaliated in force, firing off cruise missiles in return at the missile emplacements that had shown up on their radars. What little good it did them though.

* * *

"Sir!" an officer yelled to COMUSNAVCENT. "Our Tomahawks are being shot down before they even reach the island!"

"Goddamn," he said to himself. The radar screens showed almost all the first wave of Tomahawks were shot down several nautical miles out, exploding harmlessly over the ocean. The massive amount of fire coming from the island was just too much for the cruise missiles, and there were going to have to find another way to deal with that particular threat.

An explosion nearby made the V_inson_ shutter, and that really pissed COMUSNAVCENT off.

"Somebody target the FUCKING launchers!" COMUSNAVCENT screamed out to the officers in the CIC. "We are getting pounded by the missiles and we need to get those guys offline NOW!"

"All callsigns, all callsigns, begin attack mission immediately," one of the officers in the CIC announced on his radio. AWACS got the hint, and vectored in the planes in the air, toward their targets.

"This is Blackbeard 4-5, we're going in!"

"Typhoon 2-1, on attack run!"

"Dodger 3-4, starting our run, going in."

Eighty planes streamed in toward the island from all angles, ranging from the Navy F/A-18s, Marine Harriers, Air Force A-10s, RAF Tornados, and even some Canadian CF-18s were in on the action, stationed on maneuvers with the US Military in Djibouti.

"Jesus!" Blackbeard 4-5 cursed under his breath. There were quite literally, thousands of missiles in the air, some anti-ship, some anti-air, and it was all one big clusterfuck all around. Blackbeard and his flight, a pair of F-15Es, dropped their JDAMs on whatever targets they could find before bugging out due to the volume of incoming fire from the island.

"Good tone, good tone," Typhoon said to the rest of her flight. They were F/A-18s, from the USS Harry Truman on a Wild Weasel mission. "Magnum, Magnum."

Typhoon flight launched all their missiles.

"Shit! Lost tone!" Typhoon watched helplessly as their missiles went wild and fell haplessly into the sea. "Fuck!"

Typhoon cursed her bad luck before engaging with guns at the streams of UCAVs that came after them.

"This is Dodger Lead." They were Air Force A-10s, a big, fuck ugly plane, but could take it as well as dish it out. Armored enough to carry it to hell and back (and then some), built around a massive 30mm GAU-8/A Gatling gun that could easily rip apart tanks, buildings, and bunkers, let alone mere flesh and bone. "Engaging at will." The four A-10s together had a combined ordnance load of _thirty-two tons_, ranging from unguided rockets, JDAMs, cluster bombs, incendiary devices, and laser guided Paveway bombs.

"Dodger Lead, this is Tinman," Dodger lead's wingman said over their radio. "I have no targets, cannot engage."

"What are you talking about?!" Dodger Lead asked back, irritated. "There are tons of targets down there!"  
"Radar is still not picking up anything," Tinman said back to him, looking at his HUD. "Negative tone on anything."

"Look, there!" A launcher popped up and fired a couple of SAMs at a French Mirage 2000. The pilot fired off a couple of flares and took off running toward the east.

"Dodger 3-4 to all callsigns, the launchers are hardened and are concealed. We're going in with guns."

The A-10s swung around from their aborted first run and started another one.

"Heavy triple A!" Automated 20mm modele F2s, Bofors 57mm, and 100mm French made naval guns opened up, the black puffs reminding the A-10s that they could easily be ripped apart by a lucky shot from one of those guns.

"Stay on it!" Tinman yelled to his flight lead.

"Engaging!" The 30mm gun roared to life and blanketed an (American) football sized area full of the rounds, destroying several AAA guns and missile launchers. Bullets and shrapnel pinged all around his aircraft, but it could take the punishment.

"Targets destroyed!" Dodger Lead announced. He turned around for another attack run.

"Enemy UCAV!" his wingman yelled out over the radio. Dodger Lead saw the group of UCAVs coming from his nine o'clock, trying to take out the flight of A-10s. There was almost nothing he could do about that…unless…

"Oh, fuck it!" Dodger Lead swung his plane around, and depressed the trigger for the 30mm gun. The A-10 was never designed to fight in air to air combat, and certainly not with that monstrosity in the belly of that plane. But since the UCAVs were so close together, hitting one of them was actually pretty easy. The string of 30mm shells zipped through the cold air, and as luck would have it, the UCAVs were heading around for another pass. Dodger Lead fired at exactly the right time, and accurately lead the target of a group of nine UCAVs, all flying in groups of three. The shells ripped through the drones, exploding them in a fabulous fireball that would have made Michael Bay proud.

Nine drones down in a matter of seconds was some sort of record, and not one that went unnoticed.

"Nice shooting Dodger 3-4!" one of the Navy pilots, Playboy 5-6, called out to him.

"Thanks!" Dodger Lead went in for another gun run, firing his gun until he was out of ammunition. "This is Dodger Lead, Winchester, Winchester."

The AWACS responded after a couple of seconds; they certainly had their hands full today. "Roger that, Dodger Lead RTB for refuel and rearm. Out."

Dodger flight zipped out of the AO as fast as they could, hoping that they could get rearmed and back in the fight as soon as possible.

"What was that?!" COMUSNAVCENT saw the entire thing go down on several TV monitors, from live video feeds coming in from MQ-9 Reapers that had just positioned themselves over the island and a KH-13 satellite that was in geosynchronous orbit over the island, specifically to cover this battle. It had burned up almost a third of its remaining fuel trying to get into position over the island, and now the President, the JCS, the NSC, and anyone else with a high enough security clearance could watch the battle taking place.

"Jesus, that A-10 just took out nine UCAVs," an officer commented in the CIC.

COMUSNAVCENT went back to looking at the radar screens, keeping track of the battle at hand. "Has anyone got any information on enemy forces?"  
COMUSNAVCENT's J-2 was on the spot with some collected information. "Sir, the enemy as we can tell at this point consists of Reaper drones, and the UCAVs appear to be X-45s, a project by the Boeing Corporation. But sir, these drones seem to be far in advance to what they were able to come up with. I don't know how they did it."

"Doesn't matter at this point. All we know is that they've been taking out most of our air cover…"

COMUSNAVCENT was interrupted by a seaman running up to him. "Sir, casualty report."

"Go ahead son." Communications were still iffy, and so some things had to be delivered the good old fashioned way.

"Preliminary casualty count coming in sir. 500 dead, 1500 wounded, 100 missing. Thirty aircraft shot down so far, twenty more damaged." He paused to take a better look at the piece of paper he was holding. "Several ships damaged, we'll have more information on that later, sir."

"Very good son. Dismissed." The young seaman saluted and ran off.

"Any word on the northern fleet?" COMUSNAVCENT asked his J-2.

"They're under attack as well, but less so than our fleet. It looks like they're focusing their attention on us for now," the J-2 replied. COMUSNAVCENT was relieved to hear that piece of news; at least someone was going to make it out alive today.

"Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop smoking." COMUSNAVCENT took out a pack of Marlboros and lit one up. As so as he did so, everyone in the CIC did as well. The stress was just that great, health concerns be dammed. The _Vinson_ shook again as two more missiles fired from UAVs detonated meters away from the ship, the Phalanx CIWS blowing them out of the sky.

* * *

"Beryl, those aircraft are targeting our anti-ship and anti-air defenses," Kunzite told her, in their own version of the CIC.

It took her a minute to respond. Beryl was lost in thought, trying to get into the mindset of the commanders opposing her. She knew that she could defeat these guys, but it was going to take a lot of fighting on her end to show them that they meant business. "How much damage have we suffered so far?"

Kunzite consulted his iPad for that data. "At this point, it looks like ten percent of our weapons are out of commission at this point."

"But we do have the replacements for them, correct?" she said to him.

"Yes, we'll be able to have most of our damaged assets online within an hour, provided that the automated repair systems work."

"And the ammunition stores?" Ammunition was always important. Can't shoot if you don't have ammo.

"Down by twenty percent. It takes a lot of ammo to fend off these guys."

That brought a frown to Beryl's face. "That was more than I predicted, but they're in a bad position, with the Suez canal out of commission. They can't resupply as efficiently…"

"…but we can't resupply, period," Kunzite said. "Not until that fleet outside is defeated."

Beryl tapped her foot on the floor, pondering her options.

"Instruct the gunnery system to slow down the firing rate to seventy-five percent of the current speed. We seem to be doing well enough, so trying to cut down on some ammunition usage would probably be the best bet."

"Affirmative. What about the nuclear missiles?"

"We'll get to that in due time. I'd say that they're going to start landing marines and such pretty soon. I'm going to let them continue to take more casualties for now, and then save the best for last."

Beryl paced about the room. The lights flickered ominously on and off as explosions rattled around the exterior of their fortress. Kunzite looked down at the tablet computer that displayed real-time information about the battle, and noticed that the SAILOR team was making more progress. He figured that he should bring that point up to her.

"What about our guests?" he said.  
Beryl took a second to reply. "The SAILOR team?"

"Yes, them," Kunzite stated. "I would be more concerned about them, Beryl."

She just blew Kunzite's concerns off. "Give me an update on their condition." Again, Kunzite consulted his tablet computer.

"They're still making their way from the south side of the island toward our position through the tram tunnels. It looks like that…Amy person has tried to access the internal mainframe and was able to get several more schematics on the general layout of the building. I don't know what else she was able to get access to, but most of the extremely secure data is safe, since those computers are not connected to the network at all."

Beryl nodded and stared at the bank of TV screens that displayed the ongoing battle.

"What's the status on the youma units?" she said after a second.

"Beryl, it's taking longer than expected to get them all fired up. Arming and fuelling all of those drones are going to…"

She waved him off, annoyed at the delay. "I get it, I get it. What about the Quick Reaction Force?"

"They're getting set up in the tram station, but there's only forty of them there…"

Goddammit, Beryl thought. This might go bad really quick.

"Make sure that the Quick Reaction Force is ready for the SAILOR team, then. And get those youma units there in case they fail." Beryl's face was stoic, thinking about those five girls trudging their way up the tunnel to lash out them.

"You mean, when they fail." Forty against five didn't sound like a fair fight. It wasn't…for the forty QRF troopers down there.

"Unfortunately, yes. They will more than likely defeat our security personnel. Let's see how they do against the youma then."

* * *

The J-2 was looking at the reports coming in from different ships and the satellite feed. It didn't provide a good picture. "Admiral, most of the air attacks are having limited success against those SAM and ASM sites. Recommend that we initiate second wave of Tomahawk strikes."

COMUSNAVCENT groaned at that fact, but they needed to something…anything to get that island back. "Done. Launch every missile that we can at last known positions of missile and gun batteries, and maybe some will get through."

"Affirmative."

"Also, prepare for landing of the Marines once those guns have been silenced. We've put off the landing too much now, and if we don't get boots on the ground now, then we'll never get what's inside there." The _Bonhomme Richard_ had been ever so gingerly edging closer and closer to the island, and so far, had escaped most of the missiles being launched at the ships. The presence of several Aegis ships certainly helped in keeping the Exocets off of their back as well, despite the volume of fire that was coming from the island.

"Right."

* * *

"For crying out loud, when are we going to get off of this fucking boat and onto dry ground!" Lance Corporal Carl Maxwell of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, 24th MEU.

"Corporal, when we get the order, we'll go," Gunnery Sergeant Johan Hartman replied to him, calmly. Normally, Gunnery Sergeants were in charge of other things, like weapons, logistics, training, etc. Hartman had pulled a lot of favors to go in on the first wave of assault troops, and his CO had reluctantly agreed. They would need all the leadership and discipline that they could get, and with some twenty odd years of experience, GySgt Hartman was probably as tough as they came. Wounded several times in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, having killed more men than probably the entire battalion combined (including crew served weapons), captured many more, and the recipient of the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and two Bronze Stars with combat "Vs". He was the rock of the battalion, but not a hardass like some Sergeants were. He didn't like yelling, and certainly didn't like disciplining people unless absolutely necessary.

"Gunny…Jesus!" Another explosion rocked the _Bonhomme Richard_ as a missile detonated nearby. Unlike the aircraft carriers, they were on the north side of the island, preparing to assault one of the abandoned towns and secure it for the rest of the landing force. There were just as many ships on the north side of the island as there were on the south side, but the ones on the north were mostly NATO and foreign navies, while the south group was mostly American. The focus of most of the fire had been at the carrier groups on the south side, but that didn't mean that the north group hadn't been pounded as well.

Though they were in their Assault Amphibious Vehicles, or "Amtracks" for short, one explosion from those Hellfire or Exocet missiles could send them all straight to hell with no chance to shoot back. That thought was not a very comforting one, especially to men who trained constantly to kill the enemy. At least the craft they were on, a Landing Craft Air Cushion, or LCAC, would perhaps give them the grace time to get off of this damned ship.

"Just got the word!" the driver yelled out to them. "We're Oscar Mike!"

"Finally."

"All callsigns, all callsigns, this is Gambit Actual to all Gambit units." Their CO, a newly promoted Colonel who had never seen combat, but was well trained in combat tactics and warfare. Nothing could make up for experience, but at least this was someone that who knew that he didn't know the ins and out of combat, and was willing to let his subordinates who actually been in combat do the heavy lifting.

Hartman hit the push-to-talk function on his radio. "Gambit 4-2 to Gambit Actual, we're all ready here."

"Very good. We're moving out. Remember the plan and we'll be fine."

"Remember the plan. Famous last words," Hartman muttered to himself.

The doors on the Bonhomme Richard opened up to the sea, revealing the carnage that the marines had been missing.

"Oh my God…" one of the marines in AAV said out loud. An F/A-18 went down in flames, exploding in the distance.

"Hold on!" The LCACs powered forward, heading at full tilt toward the island some twenty nautical miles away. It would take some thirty minutes. Thirty minutes under fire and more than likely, they would be hit by something.

Who thought of this great plan anyway? Hartman thought to himself.

* * *

"Beryl, they've launched their marines." There were plenty of video cameras on the island to show the battle outside, and on the north side, they could see the LCACs coming in at full speed, ready for a landing. Several Tomahawk missiles detonated near the camera, knocking it out, but the feed was immediately replaced by a spare feed, a couple hundred of meters to the left. The camera itself would be replaced within ten minutes by the automated repair systems.

"Good. Let them come to the shore. Cease fire of all the guns and missile batteries. Let them think that they've got the upper hand."

"What about the UAVs?" the PMC commander asked her. He didn't want to do what she was thinking of doing, but if that was what it came down to…

"Self destruct them. There's only a hundred or so of them left out there?"

"Yes," was the response from the radar operator.

"We have plenty more where those came from. Do it."

* * *

"Admiral, reports are coming in that the remaining UCAVs and UAVs have just dropped into the sea." The radar blips that described the hostile UAVs suddenly dropped off the screen, to the relief of everyone in the CIC. The missiles that had been fired from the island also dropped off. To everyone in the CIC, that meant one thing; they were starting to have an effect on the Nakanishi Group, and despite their best efforts, they could not hold against the might of the US Military and her allies.

"AWACS, can you confirm this?" COMUSNAVCENT asked the AWACS flying overhead.  
"Affirmative, no enemy activity on our end. Looks like our efforts paid off on this one. Jamming on their end has ceased."

Another officer chimed in with his report. "I'm getting visual reports from most of the flights around the area that the SAM batteries and the automated guns are falling silent. Looks like they're all offline."

"This is great news. Move the fleet in closer so that we can get a better handle on this situation."

That order brought some suspicion from some of the other high-ranking officers on the bridge. "Sir, are you sure that's wise? I mean, they could be faking…" the J-2 started, but was cut off by COMUSNAVCENT.  
"We need to get this thing resolved and resolved now. And if they do decide to open up on us again, we have more than enough firepower from our guns and CAS planes to effectively terminate all resistance, like what we've just seen here."

The captain of the USS _Carl Vinson_ sighed, but complied with the order. "If you say so. Helm, take us in at half speed. Stop when we've reached forty nautical miles from the coastline."

"Aye-aye, captain." The aircraft carriers, with their huge nuclear reactors, were generating an output of 260000 horsepower and capable of moving the monstrosity at a good 30 knots. They would get to their specified location just as the Marines were to hit the shore, just in time to provide more troops to support the landing. The destroyers would have to move in further, as their guns could not extend out all that far, and almost all of their missiles had been expended at this point. The battle had turned out to be one big fucked up mess, and with a little bit of luck, they could finally put an end to this thing by day's end.

* * *

"It looks like the battle is finally turning to our favor," SecDef Freidman said to the President. They were in the situation room below the White House, finally patched up after recent events. A live satellite feed gave real time images to the President and SecDef, along with the Joint Chiefs, who were still in their secure facility.

"Haven't heard you talk for a little bit," the COS said to him, bringing in some coffee.

"There hasn't been much of a need. And besides, I've been trying to organize the entire multinational fleet with Secretary of State, calling up the National Guard and Reserves, and to unfuck this entire country from the grasp of a MNC."

"It could be worse," the COS said, sitting down next to him and getting out his tablet computer. "You could have to fight off an alien invasion."

"Oh ha, ha. Never heard that one before," SecDef retorted, taking a sip of coffee.

"That's enough you two," POTUS interrupted. "Let's get back to the mission at hand."

"It looks like the Marines are about to hit the beaches," SecDef noted, pointing at the north end of the island.

* * *

"All callsigns, prepare for landing, out." The LT was certainly very nervous about the landing, and as a consequence, kept announcing how far they were out from the island despite having orders from the Colonel not to do that; it made everyone extremely nervous and plus, the LCAC craftmaster would do that anyway.

"Stop jamming up the fucking radio," GySgt Hartman's legendary patience was starting to become more and more tested with every offhand comment, every minor foulup, and every misplaced piece of gear. It was quickly becoming apparent that this invasion was hastily put together, with the tanks landing supposedly without infantry support, with no provisions set aside for maintaining the operation at hand, poor communication between the group landing at the village and the airport, and just several other things that Hartman had noticed in the scant hour and a half they had been riding on this Amtrack.

"Hey, they stopped firing," LCpl Maxwell noted, seeing more and more aircraft stream overhead. Three Harriers flew by, firing some rockets at the landing site the marines were about to disembark at.

"Hot damn, look at that!" UAVs fell left and right, exploding near the Amtracks as they approached the shoreline.

"Take that you sons of bitches!"

"Oorah!" was the cry that resounded in the early morning air.

"Can the chatter marines!" As much as he appreciated the enthusiasm of his marines, Hartman had to keep them focused, otherwise they would lose track of the mission at hand. The commander of the battalion had addressed the officers and NCOs of the company before they shipped out that morning, after their traditional pre-invasion breakfast of steak and eggs.

"There are no civilians, I repeat, there are no civilians on the island; they've been moved off the island ever since the Nakanishi Group took over operations in 2007. So anything that moves that's not one of ours, you shoot them."

"Is that to be taken as our rules of engagement?" one of the platoon LTs asked the Colonel.

"That is affirmative. ROE is to kill anything that moves out there. Complete and total annihilation of the Nakanishi Group is the order of the day here people."

That brought a sigh of relief from some of the marines; it was very rare in this day and age to have such ROEs like that; the urban based, close quarters battle that was the hallmark of most modern day combat did not allow for a fight that every marine or soldier wished for; a balls to the wall assault on the enemy. No pesky civilians to get in the way, no worries about collateral damage, just you and the enemy. Oo-fucking-rah.

"I wonder how they felt about that," LCpl Maxwell said to the Gunny. Hartman kept his silence, knowing full well that what had transpired in the evacuation of the civilians probably wasn't a good one.

"These three islands here, Abd al Kuri, Samhah, and Darsah, are going to be secured by the Italians and the Indians, but we have no reason to believe that the Nakanishi Group has anything stationed on those islands. All of their defenses are concentrated on Socotra proper."

The Colonel moved on to the specifics of their operation, bringing up a digital map of the island and their area of operations.

"I" company will be landing about two clicks away from us to secure the former airfield here. Your company, "K", will secure this small town here called Qashlu. You are to hold your position until more marines and others from supporting nations arrive in force so that we can secure the underground base that the Nakanishi Group has here."

"What if we discover an entrance to the base?" another one of officers asked the Colonel.

"Do not, I repeat, do not attempt entry into the base. We do not know what's in there, and that part of the operation has been reserved for Force Recon and other SOCOM units."

That brought some stifled groans from the assembly, but the Colonel moved to reassure them.

"Be that as it may, we are expecting heavy resistance. From what, we don't know, but rest assured gentlemen, they will put up resistance when we land. Any questions?"  
There were none, per the usual.

"Then good luck gentlemen. Godspeed. Oorah!"

"Oorah!"

"Marines, stay focused!" the Gunny's orders managed to keep the calm. The LCACs were getting very close now…five hundred meters…four hundred…

They closed the distance extremely fast, their 12000 brake horsepower power plant generating a quick forty knots. LCACs were designed specifically for over the horizon (as it was called in military jargon) operations, as in, the Bonhomme Richard would attempt to keep as far away from the shore as possible, while the LCACs rolled in on their cushions of air, powering over the waves and rough surf that was typical of this region for this time of year. There was a slight bump as they hit the shore, and put down their air cushion, lowering themselves down and allowing the Amtracks to disembark with their marines.

"Okay, we're moving the Amtracks out!" Six Amtracks on three LCACs rushed out to the village. It was in bad shape already, having been in a state of disrepair since being abandoned six years prior, but after the bombardment, there wasn't much left. One hundred meters away from the village, they dropped their ramps and the marines poured out.

"Move, move, move!" GySgt Hartman yelled to the two squads of marines in the Amtrack, but they needed no encouragement on their accord. Marines ran toward the village, and got to what little cover there was in the exposed terrain. Other than the Amtracks, there was the infantry…and that was about it. Apparently, the M1A2s wouldn't be moving in until the next wave of LCACs hit the shore; then they could start kicking ass. If they found any enemies at all, that weren't automated guns or SAM emplacements.

"First Platoon!" An LT yelled out to a couple of squads that had flopped down in cover near the village. "Keep advancing toward the village!"

GySgt Hartman's job was more an observer position, since a person of his rank would more behind a desk or training other marines, but that didn't mean he hadn't lost it.

"LT," he said to the officer in charge. "I'll go up with 1st squad and try to clear out those houses on the right there."

"Right, I'm sure they could use the help." Hartman wasn't quite sure if that comment was supposed to be sarcastic or he was just stating that they actually needed his help. Nonetheless, he jogged a bit quicker to find LCpl Maxwell clearing out a dilapidated house.

"Clear!" A fire team piled out of the house and moved on, with the Lance Corporal hefting his newly issued M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, a replacement for the M249 that were getting old and worn down after years of use in Iraq and Afghanistan. It didn't provide as much firepower that the M249 did, but it was considerably more accurate and was built in mind for the close in combat role of modern warfare.

"How are you doing, Lance Corporal?" he asked him as they came back from securing another house.

The young Marine nodded his reply. "Doing good Gunny. Glad to be off that fucking boat and doing our jobs, oorah."

"I think we can all say the ride on that tub was not a fun one," Hartman replied. "Keep up the good work, Marine."

The village of Qashlu was quickly captured in a matter of minutes; it wasn't a large town at all, with a couple of dozen houses in sum that made up the place. Marines found remmants of their previous owners; a couple of stray goats, some dolls, clothing, untended gardens…it was a chilling reminder of the people who had been forcibly evicted from this place.

A couple of SH-60s escorted by AH-1Zs buzzed overhead, headed toward the airport to drop off their chalks of anxious marines. The marines there of course, would find nothing. Yet.

* * *

"The marines are on the shore, with more on the way," one of the PMC operators said to Beryl. "Looks like about two companies worth."

"Let's give them something to think about," Beryl replied. "Have some of the light machine guns open up on them. Draw them out from the shoreline and make sure that they're in the kill zone."

* * *

"Watch your sectors!" The sergeant in command of 1st squad was pushing slightly to the southeast of the village, setting up a perimeter for the incoming reinforcements. "Jackson, keep your SAW on the left over there, by those funky looking trees over there. Maxwell, take your fire team and spread out near the road over there." Hartman ran up to the Sergeant, and covered his six while he continued to issue orders.

"Sergeant, what's the situation?" he asked.

The Sergeant replied immediately. "Gunny, I've got my squad spread out near the road here, covering the approach to that road over there. It might be that we could have enemy forces from that direction, but from how things are going right now, I don't think that'll be a problem."

"Understood, keep it up."

Hartman got a call over his radio; it was the colonel in charge of the operation on the Bonhomme Richard.

"Gambit Actual to Gambit 4-2, come in, over."

That was GySgt Hartman's callsign. He reached for his receiver and answered the call. "This is 4-2, send traffic."

"Gambit 4-2, tank support has been delayed. We've run into some problems with loading them back onto the LCACs and it'll take some time to get them up to your position."

"Roger that. Have the other commands been notified?"

"Affirmative, we have notified all commands of this situation, and we are working to get it resolved, break."

There was a slight pause as the Colonel received another report from a staff officer.

"Air support however, is online. A flight of Harriers and Vipers are on standby, callsigns are Romeo 3-1 and Juliet 4-1."

"How fitting," the Gunny muttered under his breath. "Roger Gambit Actual. 4-2, out."

"Gunny." The LT was behind him, talking to Gambit Actual before turning his attention to Hartman. "I've got first platoon guarding this part of the village, and second and third platoons are finishing up their operations in the village. Once they help to establish a perimeter, we're going to advance about five-hundred meters south with the AAVs, just to make sure that those guns are knocked out."

"Sounds good LT." That brought a slight smile from the LT; a compliment from a grizzled marine like the Gunny was a feat unto itself. Hartman did think it was prudent to make sure that all those weapons emplacements in the distance, but he did wish that the armor would hurry up and help support them. Oh well, at least they had the destroyers with their 5inch guns, ready to support any calls for suppressive fire. They were just itching to shoot something that they could (kinda) see, after being hammered by missiles all morning long. He was back with the young Lance Corporal, who was scanning the horizon with his M27.

"Gunny, did we just land on Pandora or something like that?"

"What?"

"Take a look at these trees and plant…thingies."

The Lance Corporal was right. Again, in their haste, the USMC had forgotten to brief the landing troops that Socotra was one of the most alien looking places on the face of the Earth.

"Maybe we'll find aliens here. They're coming out of walls man! Game over!" Maxwell joked, but stopped when the Gunny gave him a stare. Not because it was in bad taste, but because he was about to say that exact same quote, and the Lance Corporal had just stolen it.

"Sorry Gunny," he said sheepishly, embarrassed that he had insulted him.

"Ugh." But Hartman couldn't stay mad for long at the young man; he was just a kid, and they were just trying to make the best out of a pretty crappy situation. His brief frown turned into a slight smile, and he shook his head at Maxwell, who returned the smile.

Suddenly, a burst of machine gun fire resounded about fifty meters from their position, from the funky-looking trees that one of the machine gunners had been stationed by.

"Gambit 4-4, why are you firing?!" The LT screamed over his radio, obviously very upset.

"LT, I thought I saw something near the Amtracks!" was Gambit 4-4's hasty response.

"Knock it off!" The LT tried to sound more important than he really was. "Sergeant, I want you to write that man up for disciplinary action after…"

The sound of more gunfire echoed by the AAVs as they suddenly encountered heavy resistance from…something.

"This is Foxtrot 2-2," an AAV, the "Boomstick", as it was affectionately nicknamed, announced over the radio. "We are taking fire from several hidden bunkers some several hundred meters out." The chatter of automatic fire from several 7.62mm machine guns coming from three bunkers that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere resounded throughout the semi-humid air. The Amtracks returned fire, and walked their 25mm Bushmaster cannons right up to the bunkers.

"This is Foxtrot 2-3," the AAV "Juicy-juice," reported over the radio. "Our cannon fire is not having any effect on the bunkers. Advise, over."

"Damn," the LT cursed. "Okay, Foxtrot 2-2 and 2-3, hold position and continue to engage those bunkers. The rest of you, standby." He switched over to the command frequency. "Gambit Actual, this is Gambit 4-1, we are taking fire from several bunkers and are pinned down near the outskirts of the village. 25 Mike Mike fire is not effective against the bunkers. Advise, over."

The response from Gambit Actual was not very helpful. "Gambit 4-1, keep your unit in position and wait for reinforcements."

"Gambit Actual, I don't think you understand, we're under fire here and the AAVs are not enough. We need something else."

The chatter of gunfire had now increased threefold, and the sound of whistling bullets resounded overhead. The marines kept their heads down, trying to be a small as possible as the AAVs continued their hapless engagement with the machine gun bunkers.

There was a slight pause before Gambit Actual replied. "Okay, Gambit 4-1, do whatever it takes to get rid of those bunkers, but do not engage more than one klick outside the village, over."

"Understood. Out."

It was quickly becoming apparent that resistance was forming, and that there were hidden bunkers everywhere. A single company of marines, no matter how well trained and equipped, was not going to be able to take on all of those bunkers; but then again, it wasn't their job to. They just needed to hold on and wait for reinforcements. Finally, someone got their head on straight, and it was probably the right person for the mission anyway.

"This is Gambit 5-6, I can call in a fire mission and eliminate those bunkers, over." Gambit 5-6 was the FO for the ships stationed some ten kilometers away, and it looked like they were going to need their firepower.

The LT jumped on that chance. "Roger that Gambit 5-6, go ahead and call the fire mission. I'll back the AAVs out, over. Foxtrot 2-2 and 2-3, fall back from your current position and proceed to the village. All units, retreat toward the road and await further instructions. Out."

* * *

"The machine spirit sings to me," the driver in the AAV "Juicy juice," quietly commented.

"Man, you've been playing too much of that board game shit," the gunner shot back, before resuming firing at whatever was shooting at him. There was a moment of silence before the driver shouted out something.

"For the god emperor!"

That got a laugh from everyone.

* * *

"USS _John McCain_, over," Gambit 5-6 said over his radio to a ship that was clearly visible in the distance, waiting for any sort of action.

"This is the _McCain_, waiting for coordinates, over."

"Fire Mission…" the observer said, but was cut off by the Fire Direction Center at CIC on the _McCain_.

"Standby, we're getting vectoring in several other allied craft."

The INS_ Mysore_, INS _Mumbai_, two New Delhi class guided missile destroyers, the _Lanzhou _and _Haibou,_ from the People's Liberation Army Navy ("Army Navy?" was a confusing contradiction that had many newcomers to the international military scene scratching their heads), and a destroyer from the Netherlands, HNLMS _De Ruyter. _They all possessed massive firepower, with 5inch, 100mm, and 127mm guns ready to rock and roll against any possible threat that the marines on the shore might come up against. Since they were foreign navies, they did not have direct contact with the marines on the ground that needed their help. Rather, they would get instructions from the _John McCain_, and would then fire at the coordinates provided. It wasn't a great setup, but there hadn't been enough time to get things organized properly so this would have to do for now.

The observer tried again. "_McCain_, we are under heavy fire from enemy machine gun bunkers, we need a fire mission, over."

"Roger, we're ready on this end."

"Fire Mission, three enemy bunkers, grid reference Zulu Papa, 120949, range…" The observer looked through a laser rangefinder to calculate the distance. "Range, 1500 meters. Fire for effect. Over."

"Gambit 5-6, fire mission, at grid reference Zulu Papa, 120949, range 1500 meters, five rounds on enemy bunkers."

"Affirmative, _McCain_."

"Shot, over."

"Shot, out."

"Rounds away, standby." The _McCain_, along with the other ships providing fire support, started to engage their guns.

The thunderous chorus of their rounds soaring through the air was a sweet sound to the men under fire; if the Navy did its' job, then they would have less fighting to do. Of course, that was all part of the fun, seeing the enemy cut to ribbons.

"Rounds are five seconds out."

True to their word, five seconds later, the rounds started impacted around the area that the FO had requested. And of course, they were off target. The FO got back on the radio to adjust fire.

"Adjust fire, 1500 meters, 50 up, 50 right."

"Adjusting fire."

Again, the guns fired, and this time, they were on target.

"_McCain_, you're right on the money, fire for effect, fire for effect."

"Roger, firing for effect." The shells landed on the bunkers, blowing them up in a spectacular fashion, rocks and debris flying everywhere.

"Hot damn!" LCpl. Maxwell said to the Gunny, who was watching the action go down by one of the AAVs. They had retreated per the LT's orders, and were now waiting by road that was running through the village.

"_McCain_, this is Gambit 5-6, end of mission, BDA is as follows; three enemy bunkers destroyed with unknown enemy causalities, over."

"Roger Gambit 5-6. We're here if you need us. Out."

The CO for the company, a captain with several OIF tours under his belt, was reorganizing the company so that they could repel any counterattack. "Gambit 4-4, Gambit 4-2, continue to hold position outside the village and await orders. Gambit Actual, out."

"Give me a headcount Gambit 4-1," the Colonel onboard the _Bonhomme Richard_ said to the units on the ground. That just added to the confusion on the ground, as too many officers wanted to micromanage the entire operation. Everyone wanted a piece of the glory, but the resulting mess meant that things were messed up, and it took

"Gambit 4-2, we're fine here. No causalities from the resulting engagement, although I think the Amtracks are going to need a new coat of paint."

That brought a chuckle from the Colonel before he issued new orders.

"All Gambit callsigns, dig in and await further instructions. Gambit Actual, out."

"Alright, dig in guys," the LT commanded his platoon. Out came the collapsible shovels, and some of the marines dragged some abandoned vehicles and other debris to make a makeshift strongpoint along the road that passed through the town.

The other company that had secured the airfield, Pitcher 4-1, 4-2, and 4-3, was doing fine as well. They had not come into contact with anyone, unlike Gambit.

* * *

The situation in the CIC for the Nakanishi Group was getting better and better. "Beryl, the marines are digging in and are awaiting further reinforcements," the PMC commander told her. He had been out taking a quick smoking break before coming back to the action.

She nodded at his report. "Well, let's not keep them waiting. What's the status on the nuclear weapons?"

The PMC commander looked at his tablet computer that he carried at his side at all times. "They're being loaded onto the Tomahawks and being fuelled. They'll be ready within an hour."

"With most of the anti-missile ordnance out of the way, they won't stand a chance." She turned back to the monitors. "Launch the second wave of UCAVs, and start up the guns again."

* * *

"Gunny, do you see that?" LCpl Maxwell saw several of the disabled guns suddenly start to activate again. They swung toward their direction.

"Oh…oh shit." Hartman got back on his radio and called it in to his LT. "Gambit 4-1, we have a situation here. The guns are reactivating."

"What do you mean, 'reactivating?'" the LT asked, stupidly. Even from his position, one could see that the supposedly out of commission naval guns were starting to power up.

Gunny cursed the fact that he had been stuck with this guy for a commanding officer. A nice guy, out of ROTC, but leading a platoon, he was not.

"LT, we are going to get our asses handed to us if we don't call in a fire mission on those guns on the mountain in front of us."

"Hold on Gambit 4-2, I'm receiving more traffic…" It was the Colonel again, demanding another SITREP. It would be the last one he would get from them.

Three 57mm Bofors guns on the 1500 meter high hill in front of the Marines, and overlooking the town they were occupying in, opened up. They could shoot off 220 rounds a minute, and they did so. They covered the entire approach to the town, the highway, the beachhead…all of it was rocked by deadly shells as they fired from their entrenched and hidden emplacements. The automated firing systems calculated the range, firing solution, and how to program the round to detonate. In this case, since it was mostly light infantry out in the open, with little cover, they were going to airburst most of the rounds, saving some for the AAVs. One of the guns moved from a left to right solution, firing a round every couple of meters or so, raking the killzone that it had been assigned. Another gun moved from a right to left solution, doing the same thing. And the third gun limited its firing radius to a twenty-five degree arc, blanketing everything within that area with its rounds. The other two guns would switch over to that solution, after they had raked the entire beachhead with rounds.

Gunny Hartman had never been in that sort of situation before. Sure, he'd been under fire, of course, but this was…unbelievable. The air was sucked right out his lungs as he dived for cover beneath some of the roadblocks that the marines had set up earlier, to defend against ground attacks. But this was too much. He looked up, and saw the young marine, LCpl. Maxwell, get obliterated into a thousand different pieces as a round landed nearby, shredding the poor man. He never stood a chance, and never felt any pain. At least that was the better way to go.

The same story befell the rest of the company in Qashlu. They were exposed, out in the open, and despite their preparations, they were destroyed by the mountain of lead that was pouring down on their positions. In thirty seconds, the entire company was dead or dying. The LT had his head severed completely off, while his body provided the only shield for his radioman, who had taken over a dozen or so fragments in his body. He bled out in a scant few minutes.

"This is Gambit 5-2, we need all the FUCKING fire we can get on those guns!" The FO was in one of the AAVs, and they had provided some protection from the deadly rain of shrapnel that had killed the rest of the company.

The USS _John McCain_ didn't need coordinates at this point; they saw those guns opening up, and immediately initiated counterbattery fire as determined by radar sensing the distance and speed as which they fired their rounds from.

"Gambit 5-2, we are firing, danger close," the CIC on the USS _John McCain_ said to the FO. Within 1500 meters was considered "danger close" for 5 inch guns.

"Just knock out those goddamned guns!" was the FO's last message. A 57mm shell, programmed to defeat armor this time, detonated near the AAV he was in, and blew it up.

* * *

There were five more ships coming in to fire upon the gun emplacements, and they engaged at will.

Shell splashes appeared all around them as the guns now trained on the ships trying to take them out. The USS _John McCain_ fired back, but they only had one 5inch gun, and all of their missiles were gone after launching them to support the landing.

"Captain, they're launching more UCAVs!" an operator in the CIC of the USS _John McCain_ reported. The ships could watch helplessly as more UAVs and UCAVs poured out of hangers from the mountain range, ready to engage more ships and planes in the air. A couple of the ships fired off the last of their anti-air missiles, and a couple more UCAVs went down when the CIWS on various ships opened fire. But there were too many of them, and they started to engage the air cover at will.

Several dozen of them sped northwards, looking for targets of opportunity.

* * *

"Vega lead, you are cleared for refueling."

"About fucking time." The flight of Canadian CF-18s that had been on the attack over the island was refueling by a KC-135 loitering some hundred or so miles to the north of the battle. All that attacking and evading drained tanks extremely fast, and even the KC-135 was starting to run low on the 200,000 pounds (31,275 gallons/118,388 liters) worth of fuel that it carried. They were part of the 409th Tactical Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force, having been lucky enough to be stuck out in the Middle East training with the Americans when the terrorists struck their own base in Alberta, causing massive damage to their headquarters and destroying three or four CF-18s before being driven off.

"Hey," one of the pilots mocked to his flight lead. "You sprayed all of your dammed cannon fire all over the place! Now that's a bad miss!"

"Shut up, Gumshoe," the flight lead replied, giving him the finger. "Those fucking UCAVs jumped us."

"Yeah, sure, excuses," Gumshoe replied.

The KC-135 fuel operator interrupted their conversation. "Vega-lead, fuelling complete."

Vega lead looked at his instruments and saw that whoever was giving out the fuel here was being really stingy.

"Golf-Foxtrot Five, can't you give me any more fuel to get back to base?" he asked.

"That's a negative Vega lead, we're running low as it is, over."

"Fuck," Vega-lead swore. He forgot to stop transmitting to the tanker though.

"Didn't catch that Vega lead, over," was the calm response from the KC-135.

"Uh, it's nothing. Vega lead, disengaging." The CF-18 released itself from the fueling hose, and backed away from the KC-135, allowing the next plane to come up to refuel.

"Your turn, Twintails." The second plane in the flight came up behind Vega Lead and started the refueling process.

"Roger."

As they waited for her to refuel, they chatted idly about the video games they were playing as of late. "So, did you ever finish that Zombi U game?" Gumshoe asked Vega lead.

He shook her head. "Nah, I had to leave. Supposedly, I was hogging up the game room all of the time."

"Well, when we get back to base, and I mean, our real base, we can finish that off."

"What about me?" Twintails asked, looking at a small gash in her left wing that had been caused by a missile missing her by millimeters.

"You can play to. Even though you are a girl," Gumshoe joked.

"Oh haha, very funny Gumshoe. Tell me the reason you and Butterfingers over there got your callsigns, again…hmm?"  
That shut him up. "Yeah…about that."

"Hey, I'm fueling here!" the fourth plane in the flight, callsign "Butterfingers", said.

The four plane flight finally got their fuel and headed back toward their base in Yemen.

"Sounds like they finally got that stupid island under control," Twintails said over her radio.

"It's about frickin time they got the place sanitized," Butterfingers sighed. "I'm just glad we could get out of there and back home, eh?"

"Yeah, but we'll be right back out there," Vega flight lead said to the rest of them. "Alright, let's RTB and make sure we're ready to get out of…" A bleeping on his instrument panel alerted everyone to the launch of missiles.

"Shit, missile spike!" Twintails jerked her CF-18 to the left and did a series of loops and turns to lose the missile lock. "Did anyone see them?!"

"There! At our six." Vega lead turned his head around and saw a mass of UCAVs flying toward his position. He also spotted the lumbering KC-135 slowly getting out of its holding pattern and away from the engagement. Vega lead quickly thought of something that would help the KC-135 get away from those UCAVs.

"Golf-Foxtrot Five, we'll cover for your escape on vector 025, over."

"Roger that Vega lead. Thanks, out." Golf-Foxtrot Five dove for the deck and powered out of there; due to its diminished fuel load, it would successfully make it out of there and back to base.

"Fuck it, all planes, turn to engage."

The other members of the flight thought that was a very bad idea. "Captain, I'm down to a couple hundred cannon and no missiles," Twintails said over the radio.

"Same," was the response from Butterfingers.

"We can't fight against these many bandits," Gumshoe said to the flight lead. "But we'll follow your orders."

Vega lead took in a deep breath, knowing that this was a very bad idea. "Cover the KC-135. That's my order."

"Roger," was the response of Twintails. The CF-18s hit their afterburners and powered toward the advancing UCAVs.

"Vega, Fox two." Vega lead fired his last remaining Sidewinder and turned away to engage three more UCAVs with his cannon. The Sidewinder hit home and obliterated three UCAVs, and he got the other three with his cannon. But that was it; the computer read that he was completely out of ordnance.

"Vega lead, Winchester, Winchester," he reported over his radio. Soon, the other three members of the flight echoed his communication.

"Twintails, Winchester."

"Gumshoe, Winchester."  
"Butterfingers, Winchester."  
That was not a good thing to hear, especially in a dogfight. Vega lead figured that he had bought the KC-135 enough time and ordered the rest of the flight to bugger out of there. But it was too late for them. As the flight tried to fly away, the remaining UCAVs, sensing weakness, swarmed in and overwhelmed the flight of four planes.

"I've got nine UCAVs on my tail!" Butterfingers screamed into his radio. It was the last thing he said before he was blotted out of the sky in a flurry of missiles.

"Goddamn! Where did those come from?!" Gumshoe shouted out before he too, was hit by missiles.

"I'm hit, I'm hit!" Gumshoe's plane spun wildly out of control, heading down toward the sea. He ejected, but only barely. The plane exploded behind him, leaving the pilot to float down toward the ocean.

"Ah, fuck!" Twintails' CF-18 was targeted now by twenty or so UCAVs, and one after the other, they fired missiles at her plane. She jinked back and forth, but it was a futile gesture. The plane blew up in the air, obliterating her.

"No!" Vega lead was the last remaining member of the flight. "AWACS, This is Vega lead, my flight's been wiped out, I need help here ASAP!" He hit the afterburner and tried to get out of there, but there were too many UCAVs.

"Say again Vega lead," the AWACS controller was trying to keep up with a thousand different calls for help, and Vega's one just got lost in the shuffle.

"I need help out here!" was the last recorded transmission from Vega flight. The entire Canadian flight was wiped from the screen, like so many other squadrons that day. The battle continued on, regardless.

* * *

"Anybody, respond!" Gunny Hartman was all by himself. The platoon that had been covering the road had been completely wiped out by the sudden artillery barrage. There was no one left; bits and pieces of what used to be Marines were now scattered everywhere. The AAVs were smoldering ruins. It was the same story from around the airfield; even more exposed than the units at Qashlu, they were slaughtered to the man as shells riddled their positions. An unlucky AH-1Z was hit by the fire and was sent spiraling down to the ground, exploding and killing both the pilot and the WSO.

"Anyone!" The radio was silent. Whatever was going on with the communications situation, it was not good. He heard some more shells whizz overhead, and heard their detonations off in the distance. Whatever they were doing, they certainly thought they had wiped out all the Marines here, and they were right. There was no more "I" company; it was just himself and his M16A4.

"Fuck." Hartman crawled out from underneath the pile of debris that he had hidden under, and looked around him. The destruction of the Marine company was complete; not a soul moved after the hail of shells had rained down on them.

As Hartman looked around the carnage around him, he thought that he could hear a slight whirring sound. It was hard to hear over the booming of the naval guns and the roar of aircraft, but it was there, although fading in and out nonetheless.

"What is that?" he muttered to himself.

The slight whirring sound came back; it sounded like a small vehicle was approaching. Hartman peered from behind the destroyed AAVs, and saw several boxy looking things approaching him.

"Oh fuck…what the fuck are these things…?" he muttered to himself. "They don't look…"

One of them fired off a grenade from its side, and detonated near where Gunny Hartman was standing. He felt a flash of pain in his side, and stifled a yelp in anger at the fact that he had been hit.

* * *

"Vampire!" That familiar call went out again in the _Vinson's_ CIC. Exhausted commanders tried to vector in what remaining anti-air missiles they could against the targets, but it was to no avail. The CIWS guns could only do so much, and the island seemed to have an unlimited supply of missiles.

It didn't look good. On the radar screens, everyone could see that a large portion of the missiles were headed toward them. "Sir, there are fifty missiles incoming toward the _Vinson_!" a staff officer pointed out.

In the distant outliers of the southern fleet, the captain of the JMSDF Destroyer _Murasame_, the one who hours earlier had let the SAILOR team off of his ship, saw the predicament that the _Vinson _was in. He knew that everyone distrusted them, he knew that they were being marginalized and put out to pasture, but this was war, and well, the Nakanishi Group had ceased to be a Japanese institution the moment they had started down this dark and dastardly path. The Captain of the _Murasame _knew what he must do. Duty demanded it.

He reached for his radio. "This is the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force Destroyer_ Murasame," _he said. "USS _Vinson_, we'll cover you."

That took the captain of the Vinson off guard for a second. "_Murasame_, what do you mean, over?" But the Captain of the _Murasame_ did not respond.

COMUSNAVCENT looked at the TV screens that showed the outside world to them.

"What are they doing…?" COMUSNAVCENT's J-2 asked.

The _Murasame_ moved from her position on the outside of the fleet toward the front of them. She powered on all of her electronic warfare equipment, ramped up her radar output and in general, made herself a massive target. From the output on the radar, it looked like she was an aircraft carrier unto herself; the missiles changed targets accordingly.

The Captain reached for the public address intercom, and gave his final order out to the crew. "This is the Captain of the _Murasame_. All hands, abandon ship. I say again, all hands, abandon ship."

"What?" one of the sailors in the boiler room said out loud. "We've barely suffered any damage."

The captain repeated the order one last time. "This is a final order. Abandon ship."

"Well, alright then…" The crew, and most of the officers dove overboard or took boats. Most of them made it off, but some were still aboard when the missiles struck home.

The XO and the Captain stayed behind, knowing what fate had in store for them. He gave out one last radio message before succumbing to his destiny. "We sacrifice ourselves to show that we are not the enemy. Good luck and May you all prosper for 10,000 years."

Fifty missiles swarmed in on the lucrative target, not knowing it was simply a small(er) vessel offering herself up in sacrifice. The automated CIWS guns managed to get ten of them, a near record for that many incoming missiles, but that wasn't the point of the mission now; now it was time for the _Murasame_ to sacrifice herself. The first two missiles hit the bridge and killed the Captain and XO in a blink of an eye. The rest of the missiles riddled the ship from bow to stern, and completely destroyed it. The massive explosion could be seen from the Vinson's CIC, where it was broadcast on cameras.

"My god…" COMUSNAVCENT slumped down in his seat, humbled by the sacrifice. He knew why the Japanese ship had been placed on the outliers of the fleet. No one trusted them anymore, but they in turn had showed them how wrong they had been. For a moment, COMUSNAVCENT's mind went blank, overcome by the might of the responsibilities that he was undertaking.

Thankfully, he had people to snap him out of it. Literally.

"Hey…hey!" His J-2 snapped his fingers in front of his face to get him back to reality. "Admiral, please, we must continue."  
"Yes…of course." COMUSNAVCENT got himself out of the chair and got back to commanding.

* * *

Gunny Hartman looked at the piece of shrapnel in his left thigh. It was bleeding, but not too much. He reached for a first aid kit that had been recently issued to him. Inside the package, was a small, one ounce tube of gel, marked "Healing Solution, Mark I." He put it on the wound, and it healed up immediately. It was still a bit sore, but he could keep moving now.

He wondered how much it cost, but then again, this wasn't the time to be thinking about such things. Hartman peeked around the corner of the AAV he had been hiding behind, and saw that the three robot thingies were still confused about where he was. Perhaps they weren't the cutting edge of technology after all. Well, time to hit back.

"How do you like me NOW!" he screamed out, and fired his M203 launcher at one of the UGVs. It exploded, sending shrapnel and pieces of its frame everywhere. Another UGV lumbered toward him, the guns on its sides blazing away. Hartman ducked back down and reloaded the M203, letting the empty grenade casing fall out and replacing a new one in the chamber. He swung around again and fired off another grenade, hitting the remaining UGVs and destroying them. It took him a moment to realize that someone was trying to reach him over the radio.

"Is anybody there?!" Gambit Actual's voice came over his radio.

"Hello! This is Gambit 4-2, I am under fire, and I need immediate assistance, over!"

"Gambit 4-2, what is your unit status?" The Colonel on the _Bonhomme Richard_ had been desperately trying to get in contact with anyone on the island, and this was the first person who had responded to his calls.

"Sir, the entire company is wiped out, we need those naval guns taken out, or else they'll keep pounding landing forces from the high ground." His eyes flickered around, looking for more advancing enemies.

"Say again 4-2, you're breaking up." The electronic jamming was back in force, and much to the detriment toward their communications.

"Goddammit Gambit Actual, the entire company got fucked up by those naval guns! I need a fire mission on those positions!"

"Standby 4-2, we're trying to…" Hartman cursed that command was dicking about, where he was about to get taken out by some stupid robots. He could see ten more of them advancing toward his position, lumbering over the rough terrain as they continued their attack pattern. Hartman dropped the radio receiver, ducked out of his position again and fired off another grenade. It detonated about 200 meters away, destroying another UGV.

A voice over the radio snapped him out of his combat trance.

"This is the USS _John McCain_, we have your signal, send for fire mission, over."

Gunny Hartman picked up the receiver he had thrown on the ground.

He also got out a basic map that had been provided to all of the senior NCOs and officers before the mission had begun, along with a GPS locator. He found his position and the position he wanted the fire mission. It was less than 1500 meters away, which for the 5 inch guns on the _McCain_ and the other ships, would qualify for a "danger close" fire mission.

The Gunny took a breath in, a dull pain in his side reminding him that he had been hit, once again.

"Gambit 4-2, fire mission, at Zulu Papa 113949, danger close, over."

The CIC confirmed the transmission from Gambit 4-2, and inputted the coordinates into their firing solution.

"Roger that, I need everything that you can put on that position. I have enemy…uh…unmanned ground vehicles and naval guns that are firing at both my position and yours, over."

"Roger, Gambit 4-2, we're going to engage. Keep your head down, out."

Again, the McCain coordinated with the other ships in the area to completely blanket the coordinates with naval gunfire.

"Shot, over."

"Shot, out."

Like the fire mission earlier, they landed with great effect on the enemy UGVs. Unlike the last one though, there were more than just a few bunkers to be taken out. More and more UGVs started to pop out, and lumbered toward Gambit 4-2's position.

"Walk the fire in another fifty meters!" Hartman screamed into his radio. The _McCain_ responded, their gun pumping out high explosive rounds one every five seconds, as fast as the gunnery system could load and fire. They fell closer and closer to the Gunnery Sergeant's position, each explosion rattling the ground around him. The UGVs kept coming…where they were coming out of, he did not know.

"Walk it in another fifty meters!" he yelled again. The fire was getting so close now. The explosions from the bursting shells kept sucking the air out of his lungs, which burned for more oxygen to keep his battered body working for a couple more minutes.

The UGVs still advanced. Hartman was sure that he had destroyed at least fifty of them, but they kept popping out of nowhere, lumbering their way toward his position by the destroyed AAV. The situation was getting very desperate, and there was but one last thing that the Gunny Sergeant could do in this situation.

"Put the fire right on my position!"

The fire control officer in the CIC hesitated for a second. "Confirm, you want the fire on your…"

"Just do it!" Hartman screamed for the last time in the radio. He dropped the receiver and started firing with his M16A4 at the nearest UGV. It sputtered to a halt before it was blown apart by a 100mm naval shell.

"Come on, you bastards!" He loaded another grenade into his M203 and fired it off. Yet another UGV flew apart, disintegrated by the grenade.

From the French ship _F710 La Fayette_, another 100mm shell was loaded into the gun and fired. It flew out of the gun at 855 meters per second, arching upward and taking about 15 seconds to cover the thirteen kilometers from it to Gunny Hartman's position.

He knew the risks. He knew that calling in an artillery strike, even in a "danger close" situation could lead to a stray round landing on a friendly position, resulting in casualties.

Gunnery Sergeant Johan Hartman died a Marine's death, facing down the enemy, firing his weapon accurately and efficiently, taking down as many as he could. The fire mission lasted for a few more seconds before the _McCain_ asked the other ships to cease fire.

Suddenly, all activity on the island stopped again. And this time, it was for real; the silence over the island was unbelievable for a second before people started chatting over the radio again. Smoke of destroyed planes, UGVs, naval guns, and other materiel wafted toward the sky, almost blanketing the area in a dark haze.

"What the hell is going on?" COMUSNAVCENT asked around the CIC of the Vinson. "Somebody please give me a SITREP!"

"Sir, there's nothing going on," was the answer from almost all of the officers there.

"I don't think it's a trap either," the J-2 said to COMUSNAVCENT. "They wouldn't try that again, and we're receiving reports that some of the Nakanishi personnel are fleeing the complex."

"Well, that's certainly…certainly good news, I guess." COMUSNAVCENT continued to observe the "battle" on the radar screens and TV monitors, but from the way things were going, there really wasn't any activity from the Nakanishi emplacements.

* * *

"Warwolf flight, status." AWACS was finally getting around to see what was the fate of the air interdiction forces. From the blips on their screens, it wasn't looking good.

"Warwolf here. We've got one plane limping back to a civilian airport in Yemen, and we're all almost out of munitions, over."

"Confirmed Warwolf Flight, uh, standby." One of the AWACS controllers looked at his radar screen to see the fate of Cipher, the plane that had been hit during the fight.

"Warwolf, Cipher made it Sana'a International Airport, and is being looked after by the local military forces there, over."

That brought a sigh of relief to the remaining planes of Warwolf flight.  
"Thank god," Wardog said over her radio. "I'd thought he'd never make it back with that one wing."

"Me too," Garuda said. "He'll be up in the sky in no time."

"We're running a bit low on fuel, and we'll have go for a refueling and rearming fairly soon," Mobius continued. "That's all, AWACS. Out."

"Understood Warwolf, out." There was a pause while they communicated with some other flights, before turning their attention to Shark flight.

"Shark flight, status."

It wasn't so good for Shark flight.

"AWACS, we've lost Shark 4-3. Plane took a direct hit and exploded. We're down to no missiles, a couple hundred 20 mike mike, and almost bingo fuel."

Shark 4-6 didn't have much to say after that.

"Understood Shark flight. We'll get someone on station to take over for your patrol. Out."

"Sorry, Shark 4-6," Mobius said over the radio.

"Don't be. That's what we're here to do." Even though Shark 4-6's response was terse, it simply reflected the reality of the situation. Two of his charges were dead, but that was the nature of war. It was bound to happen. It had been so long since anyone had been shot down in air to air combat, and to be shot down by a piece of junk drone, that didn't have a pilot and could be easily replaced…it just wasn't fair. Fucking drones.

Warwolf and Shark flights flew for a couple of minutes before the silence was interrupted by Mobius.

"Has anyone seen my wingman? I'm sure he's in a helluva fix…" Mobius slowly sang, remembering a song from the fighter band "Dos Gringos," immensely popular with fliers in all the branches.

"…I have scanned all through the skies, but I needn't use my eyes," Shark 4-6 continued, something in his eye. He was sure that it was some dust or debris. Totally not tears. Nope. He was a lot more stoic than that…was he?

"…cause that fucker only flies at my dead six…" Wardog chimed in. They got to the main part of the song; it wasn't a very long one, but it was certainly memorable to the fliers.

"So him, him, fuck him, what a way to go," the two flights sang together.

"But at least he's not jamming up the fucking radio," Shark 4-2 and Shark 4-4, plus their WSOs bellowed out.

"Is he blind or did he split?" Garuda quietly added, drowned out by the other flyers.

"I don't give a fucking shit," Shark 4-6 added.

"It's all the more glory for me," Mobius ended. "Goddamn. Goddamn," he said, shaking his head.

They sure had a different way of honoring their fallen comrades. But such was the fighter culture.

* * *

"Dragon 1-1 to AWACS, come in, over." The AC-130U pilot had been loitering for what seemed for hours, and all that tension in the air wasn't helping to pass the time either.

"This is AWACS."

"We're on approach vector 134, is the airspace clear over the AO, over?"  
"That's affirmative, we'll be bringing you in and have an air escort, over." The AWACS directed a couple of Saudi Arabian F-15Ds to their position, and after being kept out of the battle after some dallying about from high command, the King himself had personally ordered their engagement in the battle. That would certainly help with the way things were going now.

"Thanks, out." The AC-130U had been on standby for a couple of hours now, since the UCAVs had put a massive dent in everyone's plans for that day. A gunship was no use to anyone in a million pieces at the bottom of the Gulf of Aden.

"Fucking A man," the FCO said to the pilot. "It's about time they let us in there."

"Sounds like they were taking a beating," the pilot said back to her. "I don't know what to make of it, but one thing's for sure, I'm glad I'm not flying CAP."

The AC-130U continued its flight toward Socotra, ready to devastate anything in its path.


	69. Chapter LXVII: Unlimited Drill Works

**Chapter LXVII: Unlimited Drill Works**

**0900hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues." Thomas Hobbes, the Leviathan._

* * *

"I fucking hate walking," Raye complained after a couple of hours hiking uphill with all of their equipment through the tram tunnels. The walk/hike had been surprisingly uneventful, with no hidden ambushes or firefights. The SAILOR team chalked it up to the massive size of the facility, and to the fact that no one in their right mind would trek twenty kilometers, uphill, to assault a heavily fortified and defended base. But that's what made them special.

"Will you quit your bitching?" Lita said right back, just as tired and irritated as Raye was.

"We're almost at the main terminal guys," Amy whispered to them.

"Be quiet and listen up," Serena said Raye and Lita. They glared at each other, but took a knee.

"Alright, those guys are going to be waiting for us here," Amy pointed out on her tablet computer. She put it up on their HUDs for convenience sake. "There's the entrance up ahead, but that's going to be heavily guarded."

"Where do you suggest we attack from?"

"There are several maintenance entrances that we can gain access to," Amy said, highlighting them on everyone's HUDs. It was much better than looking at a map.

"It looks like they're right ahead of us," Serena said, before realizing that they had been basically travelling in a straight line for about four hours. She laughed a little bit, and that brought a smile to everyone's face, if not for a brief couple of seconds.

A massive rumble echoed throughout the tunnel, quickly putting an end to their laughter.

"What was that?" Raye asked.

"Probably the battle going on outside," Mina said. "Hope that everyone is okay." Obviously, they weren't.

Serena tapped her HUD to get into contact with Luna. "Luna, status on the fleet outside?"

"SAILOR Moon, they're taking a pounding. In addition to the anti-ship missiles, they're engaging UCAVs and UAVs out there. Uh, Unmanned Combat Vehicles and Unmanned…"

"We get it, thanks Luna."

"Please proceed with the upmost haste, SAILOR team," Luna continued. "Beryl will more than likely launch the nuclear missiles when the naval fleet has expended all its ordnance on anti-missile activities, over."

"Understood Luna. Out."

* * *

"So, the nuclear weapons…what could they do to the fleet out there?" Artemis asked Luna, gobbling up another bag of cheesy puffs. He had to shout a little bit to be heard over the engines of the Orion aircraft. "I mean, Hiroshima…Nagasaki…" he almost brought his voice down to a whisper, remembering the images seared into his mind by the textbooks in his Japanese History class. Clothing burned into flesh, people melted into nothingness, the vast amount of destruction…

"Only one of them would be sufficient to take out the fleet on each side. That would leave several more for targets in Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and a bunch of other countries," Luna stated, looking at the list of possible targets on her computer screen. "But after the destruction of the fleet, she won't need to use them. The world will know what kind of power she holds over them, and they won't make any more moves to destroy her and the Nakanishi Group."

"So that's why we have to take these guys down now?"

Luna nodded slowly. "Correct Artemis. That is correct."

* * *

They had been working nonstop. For ten days straight, the men and women of the Information Operations Section, had been toiling away at their computers, trying to get everything fixed, repaired, and even go on the offensive. Mountains of pizza from the local chain that only seemed to appear on the military bases (Anthony's), Burger King, gallons of coffee, Mountain Dew and Red Bull was the fuel that kept these nerds turned warriors running.

"Colonel." Major Sam Tyler knocked on his CO's door, only to find him with his head down, napping at his desk. "Colonel." It was early in the morning, and like everyone else there, the CO had stayed overnight working hard at trying to unfuck the US military from the Nakanishi software. It was in the very early morning hours, and despite the coffee, ten days of nonstop work was taking its toll on the rest of the wing.

"Mmmmm?" Colonel Paul Edwards raised his head and groggily saw his XO in the doorway. He coughed and raised himself off of his desk. "Yeah. Yeah, what is it Sam?"

"Sir, we found a weakness in the Nakanishi software."

"Huh?" It took him a second to recognize what the XO was saying. "What is it?"

"Sir, the backdoor program that was used in the cyberattack against our systems can be used to tap into the Nakanishi network on Socotra." Edwards blinked at the report, trying to take it all in.

"I thought that wasn't possible," he said, rubbing his eyes, then adjusting his loosened tie.

"No sir, it's not possible from outside the facility, yes. But from inside, we can access their databases and automated systems." Tyler shifted on the balls of his feet, trying to stay awake himself. Another cup of coffee sounded good at this point.

Edwards frowned at the XO's remark. "Wouldn't that be the case already if we had access inside anyway?"

Tyler shook his head. "It would take months, maybe years to break the encryption on the Nakanishi software. And since the two people that designed this stuff are dead…"

"Courtesy of the Brits," Edwards scoffed. For once, they were the ones who were a bit too trigger happy, rather than the Americans.

"…this would help us tremendously in decrypting their files and such."

"This doesn't help in any way shape or form with the battle though, doesn't it," Edwards said. He got up from his chair and started for the door. He needed some more coffee, and well, he could ask his XO to get it for him, but he wasn't. His XO was there to help run the Wing, not to be a coffee boy; at least, that was Edward's view. He had done a stint up at the Pentagon, where full-bird Colonels served coffee to the top brass, and vowed never to do that to people under his command. Yeah, it was idealistic, but there were better things to do in life than serve coffee.

"I'm sorry sir, it doesn't."

"Well, at least we can have that looked after once they've mopped up on that infernal island. Glad I'm not there right now."

"Of course."

* * *

The tram station at the entrance to the main part of the fortress was humming with activity. Patrols were checking air vents and side passages for any intruders, setting up sensors, manning machine guns, building barricades. There were at least forty Quick Reaction Force members in there, all ready to kick some ass. 2 November 1 was in charge of the entire gagglefuck there, making sure that when the SAILOR team came up from the tunnel, they would be cut down to ribbons. A small, but extremely fit man, he heralded from the Turkish Army, fighting against the PKK in Iraq.

"What's the status on those unmanned combat vehicles?" he yelled out to one of his subordinates, 3 Whiskey 4.

"The youma, right?" 3 Whiskey 4 yelled back from across the room.

"Yes, the fucking youma, what else do we call those thing around here, hmm? Metal Gears?"

"Oh, you're so funny," 3 Whiskey 4 replied back sarcastically. "Burak, you crack me up." 3 Whiskey 4 was from France, just out of the French Foreign Legion. His English left something to be desired, but then again, when you put a bunch of people in the same room that can only speak English as a second language (and not very good in that regard), things might get dicey. Burak ignored 3 Whiskey 4 and shouted at him again.

"Just give me the fucking status report."

"They'll be ready in an hour."

"An hour?!" 2 November 1 was not happy about that. "Soshkin is going to have my ass for that if I don't have those youma up and running in fifteen minutes! What's the fucking holdup?!"

3 Whiskey 4 tried to deflect his wrath. "Burak, it takes time for them to get charged, to load all the ammo, and there's over a couple thousand of them scattered all over the island, so the time it takes to…"

"Just…get…them…up," 2 November 1 scowled. 3 Whiskey 4 scurried off, presumably to yell at his own subordinates, who would then yell at their subordinates, and so on and so forth until they reached the bottom of the command chain.

"Soshkin," he said over the radio the CIC. "The youma are going to take an hour to get powered up at this point,"

"Why is this taking so long, Major?" the PMC commander snapped. "That SAILOR team is going to be at the tram station way before that, and you are going to need all the goddamned help that you can get in fighting them."

"Sir, there's only five on them and forty of us. It shouldn't be…" Soshkin cut him off.

"Listen, those girls have already taken down a squad of the QRF and before that, wiped out our PMC units in Japan, India and the United States, not to mention the other places they've gone on missions. So your men aren't going to stand a fucking chance unless they get those youma up and running. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"

"Crystal."

"Good. Good luck, out." Soshkin cut off the radio, wondering if it would be the last time he would hear from 2 November 1 ever again. Jesus, this was looking bad.

2 November 1 felt exactly the same way, but there wasn't much he could do about it.

"Shit. Move your asses!" 2 November 1 screamed at the rest of the men in the tram station.

* * *

"Okay, we're about five hundred meters out from the tram station," Amy said, calculating the distance on her HUD.

"Take a knee," Serena ordered. "Mina, Lita, keep an eye out for baddies, okay?"

"On it," Mina said. She a Lita stood a little bit in front of them, their weapons at the ready.

"What's the plan?" Serena asked Amy.

"There's several ways we could do this," Amy said, tapping on her tablet computer. "We could straight up the middle…"

"And get completely shot up," Raye darkly added.

"Or we could go around the sides and try to flank them, through these maintenance tunnels on both sides of the tram station here…"

"That sounds like a better plan," Serena noted, taking a look on her HUD. "We could easily bypass whatever traps they've set up for us when we come barging in from the sides."

"However…"

"What is it, Amy?" Serena asked, suspiciously.

"They might be able to direct forces to the flank in order to defeat us in detail, or to try to push us back into the train tunnel."

"Okay, how about this," Raye interrupted. She wasn't going to have Amy or Serena coming up with all of the goddamned plans all of the time, and she was going to have some more input, like it or not.

"Uh…sure, go ahead Raye," Serena replied, somewhat surprised at her actions, but it was good that other members of the team were at least trying to have some input on the tactical aspect of things, rather than two people try to figure out everything.

"Why don't we split up and divide their forces?"

"Raye, they're already splitting up," Amy replied. She had done a scan with her HUD and while the effectiveness of it in here was limited, it still could locate targets. "They've got a couple of squads of troops fanning out in those tunnels. They'll be on the lookout for us."

"Well, why can't we do the same? Two of us will take each side, and someone can go up the middle to attack the forces there…"

"Wait, just sending one person up the middle?" Lita asked. "That sounds like a very bad idea. Let's send one person around the right. That way, two people can attack."

"Okay Lita, you're going on the right then?" Raye sarcastically said to her, but Lita nodded her agreement.

"Yeah, that sounds good. I've got the machine gun, so I'll provide good flanking fire."

"Good. Amy, Mina, take the maintenance tunnel on the left. Raye and I will go up the middle. We'll push their forces toward the terminal and eliminate them there."

"Sounds good."

"Check your weapons," Serena ordered.

"It is just me, or is it kind of hot down here?" Mina asked the entire group.

"Well, we just hiked twenty kilometers," Lita pointed out, checking her machine gun.

"And we are far enough underground so that a lot of heat does get trapped underneath here," Amy added. "It takes a lot of energy to run a place like this, and I guess the heat sinks aren't doing their job." Mina thought that she was just making shit up now, but there really wasn't a way to prove it unless she looked it up on the internet or something like that. Amy just shrugged and inspected her weapon one last time before the assault began.

"Ready?" Serena asked.

* * *

"Sir, the motion sensors are picking up movement," 3 Whiskey 4 said to 2 November 1.

That wasn't very good. 2 November 1 swore at the bad timing, but resolved to continue nonetheless. "Shit, they're here. Status on the youma?"

3 Whiskey 4 shook his head. "Still thirty minutes from being powered up and…"

2 November 1 just threw his hands up in frustration and walked away, knowing that their chance to probably get the incoming SAILOR team was already past. But his professionalism demanded that he still continue to fight, no matter what the consequences might be.

"Alright then, we've got incoming hostiles. 1st and 4th squads, hold down the fort here and get those .50cals manned and ready to go. 2nd and 3rd squads, get ready to do some hunting."

"Hey, what do you want me to do?" 3 Whiskey 4 asked him.

"3 Whiskey 4, you're with 2nd Squad there. Get ready for that Team. Out." 2 November 1 checked his M4A1 and made sure that it had a fresh magazine. 3 Whiskey 4 did the same with his own weapon.

"2nd squad, I want you to take the tunnel on the right side of station and make a sweep of the maintenance access there. Check, double check, and check again for these fuckers. Same with you, 3rd squad, only the access port on the left."

"Affirmative," the squad leaders for 2nd and 3rd squads replied. They were from Kazakhstan ("Who the hell is Borat?" he asked 2 November 1 after being called that multiple times) and the Ukraine respectively, and were fairly well trained in the soldiering craft, but they were not really on par with other nations' militaries like the UK or the United States; probably not even smaller nations like Turkey or Sweden. Most of these guys were from "internal security forces," which meant after a couple of years stomping on the local populace in the name of domestic security, they got out and realized that they couldn't really do much with their experience of oppressing the local population in the workforce. So, they signed up to stomp necks for a PMC. And here they were.

"I'm with you 2nd Squad," 3 Whiskey 4 yelled out, running toward their position. "Let's move on out!"

* * *

As the SAILOR team got into position, they sounded off.

Lita slowly made her way down the maintenance tunnel on the right side of the tracks. She could see the squad of PMC troopers coming in her direction. They were all bunched up together, and made for an easy target. The squad hadn't seen her yet, so she got down in the prone position and sighted her M249 down the narrow hallway. "This is SAILOR Jupiter," she whispered into her radio. "I'm coming up on the right maintenance tunnel, standby for contact."

On the left side of tracks, Amy and Mina were doing the same thing, except hiding in a couple of alcoves in the wall. "This is SAILOR Venus, coming up on the junction, standby for contact." Mina readied her shotgun on the pointman for the approaching squad. Amy aimed for the guy in the rear of the formation, prepared to mow them all down when the time came.

Finally, Serena and Raye were approaching the bright lights of the tram station; they could see about a dozen men running back and forth, trying to get everything secure.

"This is SAILOR Moon, approaching the entrance to the tram station, initiating contact in ten seconds."

Serena quickly ran forward toward the tram station and tossed a flashbang grenade in the general direction of one of the highlighted machine gun positions. As it was in flight, Raye behind her tossed a grenade, then quickly swung her grenade launcher at the other .50cal and depressed the trigger. The flashbang detonated, blinding practically everyone in the tram station, at a second later, the grenades detonated, killing the weapons operators and disabling their machine guns. There were three tracks leading out to different areas in the base, and Serena and Raye were attacking out of the central one. The tram station wasn't anything special like Grand Central Station or CST in India. A low ceiling, just enough for the tram cars to move in, adorned with white tiles, several stone benches and support columns, with the entrance to the main facility was in the center with stairs going up to it.

2nd squad was moving down the hallway toward the entrance on the other side of the tracks when Lita opened up with her machine gun. The first fire team went down hard, never having the chance to raise their weapons up.

"Goddamn!" 3 Whiskey 4 screamed into his radio. "Return fire!" The remaining squad members opened up with their P90s, trying to suppress Lita and her machine gun. She fired off another burst and hit another soldier.

"Fall back!" 3 Whiskey 4 backpedaled, reloading his M4A1.

The first soldier in front peeled back, with the second and third members firing their own weapons to cover him. The theory (and practice) of the maneuver was to keep a rolling wall of fire on the target so that they would be unable to pursue or engage them as they retreated.

It was a well-executed maneuver to get out of an ambush setting. Unfortunately, it was also the one that the SAILOR team wanted the squads to do.

Mina hit the pointman of the squad with a well-placed bullet in the center of his face, dropping him to the ground. Amy opened up with her MP5-PDW and sprayed the rest of the squad with 9mm bullets. Their vests protected them though, and while some were injured, most of them were able to get back up and to start firing.

"Dammit!" Mina exclaimed, wondering why Amy had ever picked out such a low powered weapon for this sort of mission. She fired her HK417 again, hitting another member of the squad.

"Fall back to the station!" the team leader for the squad yelled out. Again, like before, a couple of members of the squad fired their weapons as the rest retreated, and they leapfrogged back to the tram station.

"This is 3 Whiskey 4, we're falling back!"

"Fuck!" 2 November 1 swore over the radio. He saw both 2nd and 3rd squads come tumbling back from the maintenance tunnels. He himself was still seeing stars from the flashbangs Serena had thrown, and the explosions from Raye's grenades had suppressed any attempt from the remaining squads to man the heavy machine guns. A couple of light machine gunners from 1st and 4th squads opened up, trying to hit the two girls who were now climbing up from the tracks.

"I've got four light machine gunners!" Raye shouted over the din. Serena and Raye hefted themselves up from the tracks and took cover behind a support column. From what they could see, the retreating squads had taken up cover behind anything they could find; sandbag emplacements, benches, support columns like their own…Raye swore she could have seen someone take cover behind a trash can, but he moved out of the way after realizing his poor choice in cover. Not that it helped him very much when a suppressed burst of machine gun fire from Lita took him down.

"Nice job Lita!" Serena called out. In her peripheral vision, she saw Amy and Mina emerge from the other tunnel and start firing at their assigned targets. Amy did a quick scan of the terminal, which revealed twenty-four targets in the area.

"You guys getting this?" Amy shouted over the din of the gunfire. Mina took cover behind a bench and squeezed off a couple more rounds, hitting one of the machine gunners. He went down, hard.

"They've got us completely outgunned!" 3 Whiskey 4 screamed over his radio.

"There's only five of them!" 2 November 1 yelled back. He popped out from the sandbag emplacement he was hiding behind and fired off a couple of shots. "I need 1st squad to push against that machine gunner on the left and try to force them into the center of the train station!"

Lita's was breathing in and out quite heavily; the adrenaline rush of battle and the excitement of being shot at…wait, more like the sheer terror of being shot at, yeah that was better. She still couldn't believe that she was having this dammed conversation with herself when a couple of bullets snapped by, announcing 1st squad's counterattack on her position.

"This is SAILOR Jupiter!" she said over the radio. "Enemy counterattack!" The black clad troopers moved up the train station, leapfrogging forward now instead of retreating this time.

"Venus, Mercury, attack the squad in front of your position," Serena ordered. She could see that the soldiers in front of her were wavering in their confidence.

"Okay, Mina, give me covering fire," Amy said.

"On it!"

Venus popped out from behind cover and started firing off indiscriminately with her battle rifle, trying to keep the rest of the enemy soldiers from firing at her one true love. Amy, trying not to think about that aspect of their relationship too much, dashed from behind the bench and slid behind another support column.

"Grenade, out!" Amy tossed a frag grenade at two troopers about ten meters away, opening up with their P90s. The grenade bounced off of the bench and detonated in the air, killing both of them and sending deadly fragments all over the place.

The situation was now becoming very fluid, as with all battles like this. Lita was holding out against the onslaught of PMC troopers assaulting her position, but without support, she would be overrun. Likewise, the aggressive attack by Mina and Amy was pushing 3rd and 4th squads back.

"This is 3rd squad!" the team leader reported over his radio, panic welling up in his voice. "We've got two hostiles advancing on our position and we can't stop them!"

"For fuck's sake, you outnumber them!" 2 November 1 yelled back. What the hell had gotten into everyone! This should have been over the minute they had initiated contact with their squads, but now this was become a full-fledged gunfight.

"Their fire is too accurate! Every time one of my guys pops his head out, they get shot!"

"Pin them down and move forward!"

Do I have to do all the fucking thinking here?! 2 November 1 thought to himself. He peered around his sandbag emplacement to see 3rd and 4th squads start to advance, with several of the troopers lay down a blistering cover fire from their P90s. Firing at over 900 rounds a minute, it was ample enough firepower to stop even platoon sized formations, if the operators knew what they were doing.

"Mina, I could use some help here!" Amy said, firing a burst from her MP5-PDW at an approaching PMC soldier's legs. She saw one of the bullets snap through the bone and send the man tumbling, screaming in pain for a medic.

"They've got me pinned here!" Lita yelled. She was in the prone position, but there were so many bullets snapping around her position that she was unable to return fire.

"Raye, advance forward and try to take some of the pressure off of Lita. I'll take care of the guys on the left by Mina and Amy. Ready to go?"

Raye finished dropping 40mm grenades into her launcher. "Ready!"

"Go!" Raye and Serena swung out from behind their support column and began their attack.

Raye fired a grenade off at a couple of soldiers taking cover behind a stone bench. The grenade detonated, but the soldiers continued to fire at Lita. Snarling angrily, in quick succession fired off two more grenades, both of them detonating slightly behind and to the left of the covered targets. The resulting explosions took off a couple of limbs and send equipment and body parts flying everywhere.

"Shit!" 3 Whiskey 4 heard over his radio. "They just took out half of my fire team!"

"1st squad, fall back, fall back!" 3 Whiskey 4 ordered over his radio.

"Negative, lieutenant!" 2 November 1 counter ordered. "Stand your ground!"

"They're flanking our guys!"

While the two PMC leaders were having an argument, Raye and Serena quickly made their way up the center platform and took cover behind yet another support column. Out of the corner of her eye, Serena could see Lita moving up with her machine gun, and Amy and Mina pushing the PMC soldiers back on her left. The plan was working perfectly.

"This is 3 Whiskey 4, we're falling back!"

"No!"

Lita saw the remnants of 1st and 2nd squads break from cover and try to make a run for the central area of the tram station, where 2 November 1 was camping out. There were some soldiers there hiding behind the sandbag structure they had built, firing out at seemingly random intervals.

"This is SAILOR Jupiter, there's a large force of troops making a run for that area over there!"

"Raye!"

"On it!" She finished reloading her MGL and snapped the chamber back into place.

"Go!"  
Lita opened up with her machine gun, with brass and disintegrating links flying everywhere. Time itself seemed to slow down as she continued to fire.

In three seconds, Raye had all of her grenades in the air, which detonated around the fleeing soldiers.

"This is 3 Whiskey 4, I'm hit!" was the last transmission that 2 November 1heard. He peeked around the corner again and saw the dead bodies of what had been 1st and 2nd squads. 2 November 1 cursed the very day he had signed up for this stupid job. Join the PMC, they said, it'll be fun, they said. A cushy life, three square meals a day, all the high tech weaponry you could possibly want…yeah, nice one.

"What should we do sir?!" the squad leader of 3rd squad asked him. He was the only one left out of his own squad, and there were only ten soldiers left out of a force of forty.

"Get on out of here. Lockdown the entrance to the rest of the facility and make sure to tell Soshkin that it was my order." What little it will do them, 2 November 1 thought to himself.

"Alright. Everyone, on me." The ten soldiers ran up the stairs to the entrance.

"They're getting away!" Amy pointed to the soldiers running up the stairs. She tried to engage the fleeing soldiers but was interrupted by a long stream of fire coming from sandbag area.

"Come and get me!" 2 November 1 shouted at the SAILOR team. He rose up from the sandbags and fired his M4A1 on full auto, spraying the station.

Serena double tapped him, sending him falling backward, dead.

"Good shooting there," Raye commented.

"Yeah. Thanks." Serena slowly approached the sandbag bunker and inspecting the dead guy.

"There should be a security station up these stairs right before the entrance," Amy pointed out.

"Okay, we'll go in, make sure everything is clear…" Serena said before being interrupted by Amy.

"Come on, Serena. I'm not a child. Just because I do all the high-tech stuff doesn't mean I'm helpless, okay?" Images of America and India flashed through Amy's mind, taking her back to the chilly air of the assault on the meat processing plant or the sticky, hot climate of Bangalore when she and those 108th soldiers attacked the Nakanishi HQ. It wasn't really Serena's fault after all though, thinking that she was more vulnerable; after all, they had been separated for the vast majority of missions since November.

Serena groaned, but Amy was right. She could look after herself as well as any of the other soldiers in the group by now. "Fine, we all go in. Happy?"

"Yeah."

The SAILOR team charged up the stairs, with Lita and Raye in the front, Serena in the center and Mina and Amy bringing up the rear. Just as they reached the top of the stairs, the remaining soldiers slammed the steel doors leading to the facility shut. There was some clanging and shuffling of feet, and then silence.

"Lita, check that door."

"On it." Lita tried to open up the door by grabbing on one of the handles, but it was stuck shut. She tried again, using more force. Nothing.

"Why won't this door open up?!" she grunted in frustration, pulling again and again at the door. Lita finally resorted to kicking it.

"Ow!" She bounced back from the door, holding her left foot in pain.

"I don't think that's going to work," Raye snickered.

"Let me see you try it!" Lita shot back.

"Guys, that's not going to work in any case." Lita and Raye turned to see Amy looking at the door with her HUD.

"What is it, Amy?" Raye asked.

"The door appears to be sealed with an electromagnetic lock," Amy stated after scanning it with HUD.

"Oh, great. We just need to cut off the power to this door then," Lita said.

"Not that simple. I still can't access their systems from here."

"Check out the security station," Serena ordered. "Maybe you'll find something there."

The security station was like the one at the submersible pen, except a bit larger. There was even a break room for officers rotating through their shifts. Several desks lined the wall with computers, and there were scattered coffee cups and sandwiches, reminders that actual people with real lives and histories used to work here. That tugged at Mina's heart for a second. That was interrupted by several loud explosions.

Bang! Bang! Amy looked up to see Raye firing at the door with her grenade launcher. No such luck.

"Shit. Fucking thing won't fucking penetrate the fucking door."

"You done yet?" Lita sarcastically commented.

"No. I'm going to try to find a way through this door. If SOMEBODY would have let me take the anti-tank launchers…" Raye shot a look at Serena in the security station. She ignored her and focused on Amy's work.

"Can I at least use the C4 on this?!" Raye yelled at Serena. Lita shot a look at Raye, since she had become her goddamned pack mule carrying the explosives.

"No, wait until I come over there," was the distracted response from Serena.

"Arggg…" Raye glared at the door, angered at its refusal to open up.

* * *

Major Tyler got off of the phone with a General, who was insistent that they send the email right away, despite him pointing out that it would be of no use outside of the facility. He figured that they must have someone on the inside already. "Colonel, they want us to send the information on the vulnerability immediately to USAFCOM."

Colonel Edwards gave him a strange look. "On who's orders?"

"It's from the Joint Chiefs. Well, they recommended it to SecDef, who ordered it to..."

Edwards sighed and waved him off. "Ah hell. Better send it." It was never a good sign when the Joint Chiefs of Staff started to micromanaging your work. Not that they were supposed to, since they lacked operational control of things, but times were different now.

"Right away."

An email detailing the specifics was sent from the offices of the Information Operations Section, bounced around a couple of servers, layered with encryption and protected behind firewalls, secure packets, and other measures that would ensure security (especially from the Nakanishi Group).

* * *

Amy was looking at some more of the data that she had gotten off of the security station computer. Again, it wasn't classified information, just whatever had been on the computer once the user logged off of it. Several of the computers on the desks were turned on, and she had her Toughbook and tablet computer hooked up to them.

"There's at least several hangers in the main section of the fortress here," she stated to the rest of the team. "Looks like they hold the UAVs and UCAVs."

"So we can get those nuclear weapons then?" Serena asked her, nervously. "Can you get a fix on their location."

"I don't know," was the unhappy response from Amy. "I can't get any of that information unless I'm in their secure servers."

"Are you getting this Luna?" Serena said over the radio.

"I'm getting some of it, but there's a lot of interference. I can barely make it out. Standby while I try to boost the signal."

A couple of seconds passed as Luna diverted some of the power from the engines of the plane to the radio antennas.

"Can you even do that?!" Artemis asked her.

"Yeah, I'm not quite sure how that works, but oh well," Luna shrugged. "SAILOR Moon, can you hear me?"

"That's much better," Serena replied. "We can hear you more clearly. Go ahead with your message."

Luna looked over some of the blueprints that Amy had sent over from the security station computers. "It appears you're closer to the surface than when you were in the submersible pen. What do you need, over?"

"You're getting the information that we're sending you, over?"

Luna checked the incoming data feed from Amy's HUD and tablet computer.

"Affirmative, it looks like there's more blueprints, a patrol schedule, and other miscellaneous things. Nothing about nuclear weapons though, over."

"Alright, thanks for that. Is there anything else?"

"I don't know, I…" Luna was interrupted by a beeping sound. She looked at her instrument panel discovered that she had an incoming call. It appeared to be from POTUS.

And why hasn't the Japanese PM called us? Luna thought as she connected the call. That coward is just hiding in the shadows, trying to wait this thing out. Well, we'll show him.

"Hold on, I'm getting a transmission from the President," Luna said to Serena. She turned her attention to the President on the other line.

"Madame President, what can I do for you?" she asked her.

"Luna, I've got some good news for you," POTUS said to her. "We're recently received some information about a weakness in the Nakanishi software from some of our cyberwarfare experts. Please send this information to your team in the field."

"Will do. Thanks, out." Luna disconnected the call. Seconds later, she received an email from the Joint Chiefs, decrypted it, read it, then recrypted it and sent it on to the SAILOR team in the field.

"Serena, heads up," Luna said. "I've just received some more information that might be helpful in breaking some of the Nakanishi encryption. Standby."

Luna sent the email to Serena, who then passed it on to Amy. She started reading it immediately.

"Okay…uh-huh…uh-huh…that makes sense."

"What? What is it?" The email was a bunch of babbling that Serena didn't understand; sure, she could memorize the thing in ten seconds, but actually understanding it was a completely different matter. One she felt more comfortable with Amy handling.

"The Nakanishi Group used a backdoor program to disable the majority of the US Military's DOD networks, along with many other organizations," Amy explained. "However, it would appear that we can use this backdoor to access the data that they have here in the fortress."

"Can you do it from here?" Serena asked hopefully.

"Let me try."

Amy followed the information that the email contained, using both the laptop and the tablet computer to find the vulnerability in the Nakanishi encryption software.

She found it. Buried underneath all that encryption was the backdoor program. Whoever designed it didn't realize that it could also be used to access their own systems, since it was meant for Nakanishi software.

"Gotcha," she muttered.

"Did it work?" Luna asked.

"Yes. I'm into their secure databases now."

Amy was now in their secure database, but there was so much information that it would take hours to find what she was looking for. She didn't know where to start.

"Did you find the nuclear weapons?" Serena asked impatiently. She glanced over at Raye and Lita, still prodding at the door to get it open.

"I don't know," Amy said. "There's a lot of data here."

"Amy…"

"Just give me a second, Serena, I'm trying!" she shot back.

That took Serena aback for a second, but recovered. "Sorry. Get it done, that's all."

Amy narrowed down her search by looking into emails, scanned memos, recorded phone conversations, pictures, cargo invoices…cargo invoices?

"Huh." Amy started to look at the cargo invoices for all incoming material coming into and out of the Socotra fortress. She found what she was looking for in an innocuous shipment of beef. The container had been shipped directly from mainland Yemen, after two different shipments from the United States had arrived there after a number of different stops.

"Five containers of beef, measuring 80 centimeters in length and 35 centimeters in diameter."

"What's that, Amy?" Mina asked, hearing Amy think out loud to herself. Serena walked over to Amy and looked over her shoulder at her computer, completely forgetting that it was also up on her HUD.

"Amy, this doesn't mean anything," Serena said to her after Amy showed it to her.

"Serena, beef shipments don't come in containers this small." She pulled up specifications on her tablet computer and set it to Serena's HUD.

"Look, this is the nuclear weapon we recovered from the meat processing plant in the United States." Serena looked over the pictures; it said "W80 warhead."

"This is what its dimensions were," Amy continued. "31 inches in length and maybe 12 inches in diameter. These containers, converted from imperial measurement, match up with the containers in the cargo invoice."

That was a long shot. It might be that it was a complete coincidence and that Amy was just seeing things.

"Where was the delivery point for this shipment in the base?" Serena asked, trying to entertain Amy with her theory.

"In Hanger A1, which is to the left of this train station, about five hundred meters down some corridors. I can send the information to Luna and she can get us there."

That fact removed all doubt from Serena's mind. Beef went into the freezer in the mess hall, not to a hanger.

"Nice, you've done good Amy." Serena clapped her on the back. "Now, get these doors opened up."

"I'm on it." Mina gave her a big hug as Serena walked away to inspect Raye and Lita's progress on the door.

* * *

"Okay, those youma are all fired up and ready to go!" a technician reported to Beryl in the CIC.

"About time," she grunted. "Send a couple of them in to access the reaction of the SAILOR team."

* * *

The doors to the entrance suddenly opened up.

"What the…" Amy was still working on the subroutine to get the doors open when Mina pulled her down.

"Get to cover!" she hissed. Lita, Raye and Serena, who had stepped away from the door for a second to reassess the situation, dove behind some benches and a support column just in time.

Amy peeked around the corner to see what was coming in the station.

Through the doors, two boxy…things rolled in. They looked like robots, but they had none of the personifying traits that humans liked to give inanimate objects. It was about one meter long, one and a half meters high, and had a machine gun strapped to its left side. It was on treads, which enabled it to roll around on any terrain. From what Amy could see, there was some optics mounted internally in the machine.

She scanned it with her HUD.

"Millimetric radar device detected," the machine said in a robotic voice. "Beginning search pattern now."

"Shit," Amy hissed to herself. "Shouldn't have done that."

"Why is it announcing its actions out loud?" Mina whispered to Amy.

"I don't know."

"Identify yourself!" the machine called out.

That made Amy cringe. "Wait, is it talking to us?"

"Two female human subjects, behind the desks, identify yourselves!" the machine called out again.

"That's us," Mina said, dejectedly. "What are we going to do?"

Amy thought for a second, then came to a decision. "I'm going to distract it. Those machines seem focused on us and not the other three. If we can keep them off guard, then they can take out the machines. Alright?"

"Wait, what are you going to…"

* * *

"What are those machines doing?" Beryl yelled at the technician controlling the youma. "That girl should be hamburger right now!" The camera on the youma was looking directly at Amy, but it was going through a series of challenges so that the target would surrender.

"Beryl, the program is on law enforcement mode right now, not the military subroutine that we programmed in."

She was surprised by that statement. There was a dammed war going on outside and these idiots were dicking around with ways to not shoot people?!

"Why the hell aren't they in military mode right now?!"

"Because we were arming and refueling them!" the technician protested. "We didn't have time to…"

"Get those FUCKING drones firing NOW!" Beryl bellowed at the technician. "Or else I put a FUCKING bullet in your FUCKING brain! DO I MAKE MYSELF ABSOLUTELY CLEAR!" Beryl was quickly losing her cool. This should have been over by now, but the SAILOR team was just messing up everything. She looked on impatiently as the technicians worked furiously to get the military subroutine working.

* * *

"This is your last chance, two female human subjects. Identify yourselves or you will be fired upon."

Amy stood up with her hands above her head. Mina kept crouched down, even though the machine still could see her.

"Human subject, identify yourself," the youma said.

Amy couldn't really think of anything to say. Mina was the guile one, not herself. Maybe I should have let Mina do this type of thing, she thought to herself.

"Um…uh…no. No, you identify yourself."

The machine stopped for a second, then repeated itself.

"Negative, identify yourself."

"No, why don't you identify yourself!" Amy shot back.

Again, another pause, before the machine repeated itself a second time.

"Negative, comply with previous instructions to identify your own person," it droned on.

"Why don't you go first and identify your own being!" Amy shouted back.

Mina put her hand on her forehead in disbelief. It was completely moronic, but it was working. The youma was going round and round in circles with Amy leading it on. It should have opened fire at this point, but the law enforcement subroutines prevented it from opening fire and killing her.

Meanwhile, with the two machines or unmanned ground vehicles as Amy's scan had revealed, Serena, Lita and Raye took aim with their weapons, ready to obliterate them when the time came.

"How many grenades do you have left?" Serena whispered to Raye.

"Twelve, with six more in the chamber here," she said back.

"Good. On my count, we're going to take down those…things."

"I dunno, it looks like Amy's got the entire situation under control," Lita joked.

"If you do not comply, hostile action will be taken in ten seconds."

"Uh…" Now Amy was out of things to say. The UGV didn't take it very kindly.

"The subject has failed to comply. Termination in five seconds."

"Okay, time to end this," Serena said. "Take 'em out!"

Lita, Serena, and Raye popped out from cover and engaged the two UGVs. The first one closest to the door was riddled with machine gun and rifle fire from Lita and Serena, smashing optics and treads, puncturing the steel plating on the outside of the UGV.

The second one, that had been interrogating Amy all the while, was exploded by a volley of 40mm grenades from Raye.

Over the gunfire, Amy swore she could hear the UGVs screaming "Exterminate! Exterminate!" but she really wasn't quite sure. Their robotic voices were quickly quieted by Raye's grenade launcher.

* * *

"We got the military subroutine online!" the technician yelled out, somewhat happily.

"You fools," Beryl hissed. "They've already destroyed those two youma down at the tram station." The video uplink was all static now, showing the SAILOR team's handiwork.

"Oh…" that killed the technician's mood right away.

"I need all remaining elements not occupied with holding off the fleet outside to mobilize and engage the SAILOR team," Beryl said, sitting down in a chair and holding her forehead. An explosion rattled overhead, causing the lights to blink on and off for a second. This was getting worse and worse by the minute. She needed some heavy painkillers for this migraine, that was for sure.


	70. Chapter LXVIII: Assault of the Senshi

**Chapter LXVIII: Assault of the Senshi.**

**1020hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie; Which, being advanc'd, declines, and then men die." Volumnia, The Tragedy of Coriolanus._

_"May no one triumph over us! Come, let's go, get a move on! May those who oppose us be obliterated! Come on, let's go!" Chale Chalo, Lagaan._

* * *

"Nice."

Raye was looking over the remains of the two UGVs. They were in a million pieces, with CPUs, video cameras and weapons all shattered beyond repair.

"Does the Nakanishi Group have an official designation for these things?" Lita wondered, poking at a piece of destroyed plastic.

Amy looked it up on the newly accessible database.

"Yes, they're called 'youma,' apparently."

"Youma? Doesn't that mean monster?" Mina added. "Nice thing to name your own personal robot that does all the killing for you."

"Could have been worse," Raye said.

"In what way?" Mina asked. She didn't want to think what was "worse". Being blown up? That was bad. Being blown up, then turned into elite assassins for a mega corporation? That was worse.

"They could have named it the Terminator." Raye mimicked the movies. "Hasta la Vista."

Mina shrugged at the reference. "I think they might have gotten into copyright issues."

"I don't think this company has to worry about copyright, period."

"That's enough," Serena interrupted. "Amy, point us toward the hanger. Luna?"

"I'm here."

"Analyze the data from the firefight we just had and look for any way to effectively take down these…youma."

Luna typed away on her computer. "I'm on it. Do you need other assistance in getting to the hanger?"

"If you could point us in the right direction and see if there are enemy reinforcements," she said.

"Done."

Luna swiveled her chair around to face Artemis, who was digging into another bag of cheesy puffs.

"Artemis, I'm sending the combat footages and HUD scans from their gunfight with the UGVs. Take a look at them and see if they have any sort of weaknesses."

He put the bag down and got back to his computer. "Other than explosives?"

Luna nodded. "Yeah. Other than explosives. Okay? I've got to help the team get to that hanger."

"Gotcha. I'm on it."

"Amy?" Luna said over the radio. "Okay, you've got the directions on your HUD?"

"Yeah, we take a left out of here and follow the hallway for about 500 meters until we get to Hanger A1."

"Minor correction Mercury," Luna said. "It's straight for about three hundred and fifty meters then a left another 150."

"Thanks, anything else?" Amy asked her, a little irked that she had gotten the directions wrong, but then again, that's why they had two junior officers circling the battle in a P-3 Orion.

"I'll let you know of any approaching hostiles."

"Thanks Luna," Serena replied. "Let's move out."

Raye and Lita took point as usual…and immediately jumped back from the door.

"Serena, there's more of those things out there!" Raye hissed. She had just seen five or six youma on both sides of the door, waiting to ambush them as they came out.

"Where?!"

"On both sides of the door. We can't get through there without being shot up."

"Luna, find me another alternative route," Serena said over the radio.

"Got it." Luna looked at the blueprints at the train station, but didn't see anything that remotely resembled an emergency exit or a passageway out of that place. They were either being extremely careful or just plain stupid when they designed this place, Luna thought to herself. Beryl sure got her money's worth. Maybe that's why she had that CEO killed…

More searching came up empty. They were going to have to attack.

"That's a negative, you're going to have to go through that ambush, over."

* * *

"Why aren't you sending the youma in!" Beryl yelled at the technicians.

"There's too many of them jamming the hallways! We've got both security personnel and youma trying to converge on the area but they keep blocking the dammed hallways up!"

"That doesn't explain why you aren't sending those youma in outside of the train station!" she screeched.

"Beryl…"

She lost it. Beryl took out her pistol, a Beretta Bobcat and pointed at the technician. She fired a single shot into the poor man's forehead, blowing his brains out all over his workstation.

"Will somebody please clean this mess up and get this entire situation unfucked?! Do I make myself clear?!"

* * *

"Thanks Luna. We'll get back to you when we've taken care of this mess. Out." Serena thought through her tactical options; they could charge out there, but that would certainly end up in all of their deaths. More grenades it was. She had heard somebody say that anything could be solved with the application of explosives. Well, if anything in the last hour or so had proven, was that theory held up.

"Okay, let's toss some grenades in there and hope for the best." Serena pointed at Lita and Raye to get started.

Lita and Raye pulled on the pins for their grenades and tossed them immediately into the hallway. A burst of gunfire from the youma answered them as they tried to target the grenades. They were so close however that they ended up hitting each other; three youma were taken out without the SAILOR team doing anything other than tossing grenades into the hallway.

The resulting explosion shattered the remaining youma.

"They're all bunched up," Raye said, poking her head out of the doorway. The smoldering ruins of several UGVs littered the hallway with their metallic gore. "No wonder they got taken out so easily."

"Mina, you're on point with me. Raye, Lita, watch our six," Serena ordered. Mina and Lita swung out into the hallway to cover

"Hold up a second." Raye stopped Amy from going out the door. Here you go Amy, take the M16 here. Something better for you to go on." Raye unslung her M16A4 with Masterkey shotgun underneath the barrel, and handed it off to Amy.

"Sorry," she replied, sheepishly.

"Don't worry about it, I've got plenty of firepower here," she said, smiling back. "Lita, give me your shotgun."

"Heh, take it." It was turning into a real round robin with the weapons.

"Guys, will you please get your shit together!" Serena said, exasperated. "They're coming!"

"Fine, fine." Raye tossed Amy a couple of shotgun shells and cocked the Mossburg 500 from Lita. "Covering!" Lita and Raye yelled to the others.

"Move!" Serena ordered.

"Moving!"

The team ran down the long hall, weapons at the ready for inevitable contact from the QRF.

"Luna here," her voice chirped into their HUDs. "A fire team of QRF soldiers is approaching at the next junction, along with two youma units."

"Got it."

Mina saw the junction up ahead; a couple of signs on the wall allowed for easy orientation of rooms in the sprawling underground complex. From what she could see, there were hallways that went on for what seemed like forever, then abruptly ended with more hallways branching off. Their combat boots thudded against the concrete floor, illuminated by extremely harsh florescent lights.

It was vaguely reminiscent of their stay at the "top secret" Medical Facility in Miyagi Prefecture. How fitting, Mina thought to herself, they were owned by the same company, after all. Oh the irony.

She saw a man poke his head around the corner. It was far out enough for Mina to line up a shot and fire. The man disappeared for a second, then the rest of him slumped out from behind the corner.

"Contact rear!" Lita fired off a couple of bursts from her M249 at some approaching soldiers. They ducked back into the train station where the SAILOR team had just come out of.

"Keep 'em pinned!" Raye fired off a grenade at the entrance before switching over to her shotgun. She fired a couple of slug rounds, pumping the forehandle of the shotgun back and forth, the green shells flying out of the chamber with great force.

* * *

"Luna, I've got something on those youma units," Artemis interrupted. It didn't take very long for him to review the footage and come up with a solution.

"Let's hear it," she replied, keeping her eyes focused on her computer, but listening all the same.

"Obviously, explosives do the trick against the UGVs, but I looked at the one Lita and Serena were targeting, and there appears to be a weak spot on the sides of the vehicle. These things though, look pretty flimsy to begin with. I'm not quite sure if it's a design flaw but concentrated gunfire to any part of the vehicle will…"

"Yeah, got it," Luna said, waving Artemis off. "You got that, Serena?"

"Yep. Aim for the sides, but heavy gunfire will do them in." Serena squeezed off a couple of rounds at the remaining youma on the corner and watched it sputter helplessly to a halt as the bullets penetrated its weak sides.

"Or large caliber weapons," Luna added. "Perhaps."

"Yeah. Got it." Serena and Amy moved forward, while Mina took overwatch on the corner they had just killed the fire team and youma units. She squeezed off several rounds at another fire team and youma advancing down the hall. She got three youma and two of the QRF soldiers before they retreated down the hall.

"How much further to the hanger?" Serena asked Amy.

"One hundred meters straight, then another fifty to the left."

"Alright."

Luna intercepted more radio traffic and cross referenced it with the blueprints. "SAILOR Moon, more contacts at the T-junction up ahead. Approaching squad of QRF troops and ten youma."

"How far out are they?" Serena dropped the magazine out of her rifle and rammed another one in.

"Fifty meters from the intersection. Standby…there's another fire team and two youma approaching on the left side from the hanger side."

Serena had to make a quick tactical decision; she could let the attacking team bunch up at the intersection, but that would mean that their firepower would be concentrated against them. The other option was to engage both of the approaching forces separately as they barreled down toward them, but that would leave the shooters engaging them open to the other enemy forces approaching in the other direction.

There really wasn't much of choice though; they had to engage them separately or the combined firepower of twelve soldiers and seven youma would be too much.

"Raye, Lita, break contact and engage forces on both sides of the T-junction, Mina, Amy, cover the rear."

"On it!" The two teams simply switched positions, with Mina and Amy flopping down on the ground into the prone position to engage any threats from their rear, and Lita and Raye taking up their familiar role as pointman.

Mina continued to lay down accurate fire from her HK417, sniping youma and soldier alike. It still didn't make it better that they were machines, she thought. All this materiel going to waste…those robots could have been used to clear minefields or to rescue trapped miners. Instead, they were attacking five out-of-their-mind women on a suicide mission to redeem themselves from an evil corporation. This was completely fucked up. She depressed the trigger a couple more times, headshotting a soldier and in quick succession, another youma.

Raye and Lita shot past Serena and immediately took up positions on the corners of the T junction, Lita on the right, Raye on the left.

"On three," Raye said. "One. Two. Three!"

The two of them swung around the corners and immediately opened fire. Lita sprayed the advancing squad with machine gun fire before taking off a grenade on her tactical vest and tossing it at some youma. Another fire team was wiped out, along with several more youma.

Lita depressed the trigger again, but this time the machine gun jammed. She looked down, noticing that a shell was stuck in the ejection port. A simple extraction method was required to defeat the jam, by sliding the hand forward and knocking the shell out of the port so the next round would feed into the chamber. In combat however, even the most simple of techniques becomes extremely hard to perform, and when Lita looked up from her jammed weapon, the soldiers were only fifteen meters away and closing.

"Shit." Lita dropped the machine gun and quickly grabbed her sidearm, firing off three shots at the closest advancing soldier. He dropped to the ground, dead. That bought her enough time to unsling her shotgun and start firing it at the remaining squad. They fell back and allowed the remaining youma to approach, the machine guns on their sides blazing away.

Raye was having an easier time. After snapping off three grenades from her launcher that destroyed the youma and two soldiers, she also got out her shotgun, blasting away at the two more soldiers who had taken cover behind the destroyed youma. Raye pulled the trigger after firing a couple more shots and realized that the shotgun was empty; time to go to the sidearm. She unholstered her Glock 18 and switched it to full-auto. Instead of firing it though, on actual automatic fire, which would serve no purpose other than to empty the magazine, she snapped off quick bursts. The two surviving soldiers quickly succumbed to the bursts snapping through their exposed faces and extremities. They went down, hard. Raye ejected the 33 round magazine and shoved in a new one.

Goddamn, nice shooting out there, she thought to herself. Really showed them who's boss now. The sound of gunfire behind her caused Raye to turn about, facing Lita. She could see that Lita was in trouble, with advancing youma and the remaining fire team putting down an increasingly heavy amount of gunfire on Lita's position.

When in doubt, attack, a vague maxim crossed Raye's mind. Sure, why not.

"Coming up at your six!" she yelled to Lita, who had switched back to her sidearm, firing rapidly at one of the youma. She got a lucky shot off when one of the rounds hit the optical control systems, rendering it blind and unable for it to move. It stopped traffic behind it, which made it very easy for Raye to fire off the grenades in her launcher at the gaggle in the hallway. The resulting explosion sent bits and pieces of youma everywhere, along with whoever had been unlucky enough to have been standing nearby the explosion.

"Clear!" Lita yelled out to Serena and the rest of the team. She picked up her machine gun and cleared the jam, sending the spent brass cartridge flying into the air, clanging off of a wall then onto the floor.

"Mina, Amy! We're moving out!" Serena ordered. She covered the two of them as they picked themselves off of the floor and disengaged from the sporadic enemies that were following them, at a distance. Mina had destroyed most of the youma that the PMC had sent out in an effort to save on their manpower. This made most of the soldiers hesitant to move out into the open hallway to engage the SAILOR team; anyone who stuck their head out there was subject to quick and accurate fire from Mina.

"Moving!" Amy yelled, running past Serena. "To the left, go!"

Mina and Amy charged down the hall and sprinted to the Hanger door, with Lita, Raye and Serena close behind, keeping a lookout for more enemies. There didn't seem to be any after the thrashing the SAILOR team had given them in the last ten minutes though.

"Luna, are there any more hostiles in the area?" Serena asked.

"Not for two hundred meters besides the hanger area," Luna replied. "They're trying to get regrouped after you blitzed through them, over."

"Well, glad to see someone appreciates our work," Serena said. She sensed that Luna was impressed with their almost impossible progress on this very difficult mission.

"Not a problem," was the reply from Luna.

* * *

"Beryl, that team is tearing our security forces apart!" Sorenson, the technician from before, was terrified of being shot after seeing one of his coworkers get gunned down by Beryl. He really didn't want to suffer that fate. This really wasn't what I signed up for, he frantically thought to himself.

Beryl had no intention of shooting any more of her own employees; she had shot one personally before the siege had begun and now this poor chap.

When this was all over, she reminded herself to send reparations to the surviving family members. It was the least she could do, she thought to herself darkly.

"Where are they headed?" she asked, complete cool this time around. The pistol was already back in her pocket, but it might as well have been pointed at Sorenson's head.

Sorenson gulped and turned to one of the monitors that had a security camera feed up. "It looks like they're headed toward Hanger A1."

"Good." Going for the nuclear weapons, hmm? Well, you might be able to plow through my security forces, but have fun busting your way through five centimeter reinforced steel blast doors.

"Ahmed," Beryl said to the man behind her. Ahmed had been quite busy trying to reorganize all of the scatter QRF units after their solid beating by the SAILOR team.

"Yes?"

"We're going to start the emergency lockdown procedure in the A1 Hanger area."

"Ma'am, that'll put a lot of strain on the reactors," he protested, taking a look at the display that showed the status of the power reserves. "We're running at ninety percent capacity, and to engage those protocols will take more energy than we already have."

"Reroute additional power from nonessential services. Greenhouses, mess halls, living areas, all of it. I need that emergency procedure in place to stop these bastards once and for all."

"Beryl," the PMC commander interrupted. "Beryl, the marines are digging in and are awaiting further reinforcements," Soshkin told her. He had been out taking a quick smoking break before coming back to the action. The gunfire resounding in the halls also reminded him that he probably shouldn't do that again.

She nodded at his report. "Well, let's not keep them waiting. What's the status on the nuclear weapons?"

The PMC commander looked at his tablet computer that he carried at his side at all times. "They're being loaded onto the Tomahawks and being fuelled. They'll be ready within an hour."

"With most of the anti-missile ordnance out of the way, they won't stand a chance." She turned back to the monitors. "Launch the second wave of UCAVs, and start up the guns again." There was a brief pause as Beryl finished up the orders on the outside situation and turned her attention back to the SAILOR team.

"Lockdown the doors to the hanger, and start sealing off the hallways. We'll corner the SAILOR team there and then take them out that way." Why didn't I think of that before? Beryl grumpily thought. Oh, that's right, I'm the only one with a fully functioning brain around here it seems. Why the fuck didn't the PMC commander, Soshkin, engage that team in the tunnel? I thought he had it under control, and now it isn't. This is what I get for having a shitty designer team and stationing the more inexperienced PMC unit here. Nice.

"Beryl." Kunzite's voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

"Yes, Kunzite?"

"Beryl, we need to take down that SAILOR team right away," he said to her.

"I know, what do you think I'm doing…?" she replied impatiently, but Kunzite kept going.

"No…I was thinking that I could go out there…"

Yeah, I think I know where this is going, Beryl thought. "Go on."

"And I could draw them out into the open, then you could have the QRF and the youma ambush them." Beryl thought that fact over, but she already knew that was going to be a suicide mission.

"I appreciate the thought, but I can't risk losing all of my company officers in a span of two weeks."

Kunzite blinked, remembering his dead lover. The one he was supposed to be avenging.

"Beryl…"

"That is my final order." She turned her attention back to the CIC.

* * *

"Sounds like a lot of naval gunfire," Amy noted, standing outside the door to the hanger. The entire facility shook with the sounds of the heavy caliber weapons opened up at the fleet outside. "We really need to get this over with."

"Tell me about it," Lita said, scanning the hallway for hostiles. She reloaded her shotgun, first by putting in a shell directly into the chamber, then loading the tube magazine with additional shells.

"Any luck on the door?" Serena asked.

"I'm almost in," Amy replied, before being interrupted.

"Emergency Lockdown initiated," a voice over an unseen loudspeaker boomed. Doors suddenly started to close and shut off the hallways toward the SAILOR team. They moved slowly, but in both directions the heavy steel doors barricaded them outside of the hanger area.

"Amy, stop those doors NOW!" Serena yelled, watching heavy steel doors slide into place in the hallways.

"I'm trying!" Everyone is so fucking dependent on me, Amy thought to herself. Great. I only had thirty minutes to look the information over. The tablet computer she was holding could only go through so many quires for information and there was no time to get out the laptop. She needed some help from someone else.

"Luna, Luna," Amy said on her radio. "Isolate the subroutine that connects the emergency lockdown procedure."

"I'm on it." With better resources and processing power on the P3 Orion, Luna was quickly able to track down and isolate the subroutine that Amy was looking for.

"I'm sending you the data now."

Amy received the information that she needed and accessed the emergency shutdown procedure.

"I'm shutting it down, standby."

Thank God for Linux. The command line bar was flashing in front of her. Sudo top, enter command "kill"…what was the process id? Yeah, 12012. Done. Better make sure that everything is wiped out as well. Amy proceeded to delete everything concerning that program.

* * *

"Beryl, the emergency shutdown was stopped."

"By whom?"  
"I don't know ma'am," Sorenson replied, looking at the computer display. Something was off, but he couldn't pin it down. Not only was the shutdown procedure stopped, it just didn't seem to exist. Oh well, they had a backup of the program and…where was it?

"Get back to me on that," Beryl said, trying to keep her head above the deluge of information that was coming into the CIC.

"Soshkin, what is the status of your QRF units?"

"They're moving in on the Hanger.

Sorenson interrupted Beryl again. "Uh…we have a major problem." He just couldn't find any evidence of the shutdown procedure existing in the first place.

Beryl sighed. Another explosion from outside the fortress interrupted that train of thought. There were more important things to be done.

"It can wait. What's the status on the UAVs out there?"

"They're making headway against the fleet. Almost all of their anti-air ordnance is expended against our missile and drone attacks, and we should be ready to launch the nuclear missiles against the fleet."

"Good. Abbreviate the launching sequence and prepare for launch in five minutes. We're going to end this now."

* * *

"You will hold the line," Soshkin said to 5 Golf 5. "This comes from Beryl herself. Extra money will be rewarded for every one of them that you bring down. The missiles will be launched in five minutes, that's all you have to hold out for."

"Five minutes!" 5 Golf 5 yelled out into the hanger. His understrength platoon of eighteen soldiers, or about two squads, had been digging in, metaphorically speaking. All of the UAVs and UCAVs had either been launched from the hanger or transferred to the other ones in the base, so there was a clear line of sight toward the single entrance to the hallway. 5 Golf 5 was from Italy, and unlike the other troops in the train station, most of these guys were not from villager stomping "internal security forces" but from proper military units like the Italian Carabinieri, the French Foreign Legion, Polish Land Forces, and even a couple of ex-Luxembourg Army (yes, there is such a thing) soldiers who had joined up after budget cuts ended most of its military.

"Roger that," he replied to Soshkin. "We've got the youma here all fired up and ready to go." While his platoon might have been understrength, he had another twenty UGVs in the room with him, freeing up his troops to erect barricades and fortifications in the hanger.

"Good. Keep me updated. Out."

"Sir." 5 Golf 5's XO, 1 Bravo 4, a lieutenant from the Corps Des Sapeurs-Pompiers from Monaco, ran over to him with a FAMAS in hand.

"What's the status of the fueling of the missiles?"

"The technicians over there are almost done. They had to skip a couple non-essential protocols for the Tomahawks, but they should be ready in a few minutes." 1 Bravo 4 gestured over to the five Tomahawks sitting on launch platforms near the front of the hanger launch doors. Several ground crew and technicians were running about, trying to get the nuclear armed missiles fuelled.

"Good. We need to protect them, but it doesn't seem like the intruders are doing at the moment."

"Perhaps they got hung up on all of the security doors?" 1 Bravo 4 suggested.

"Yeah…perhaps."

* * *

Luna was going over some more data when she noticed a massive drop in fuel reserves from Hanger A1 in the previous hour. She could have chalked it up to the UAVs being fuelled, but the reserves continued to drop after all of the flights had been launched, which meant one thing; they were getting ready to deploy the missiles. She didn't know when the nuclear weapons were going to be launched, but they were going to be soon if the data wasn't lying.

"SAILOR team, Flash message," Luna said, keeping her cool. "Nuclear missiles are probable launch in the next couple of minutes. Advise that you immediately get in there and take out the nuclear threat, over."

"I've disabled the lock to the door over there," Amy pointed over to the entrance to the hanger.

"Did you do a scan of the Hanger?" Serena asked Amy.

"Not yet, let me see."

Amy tried to scan with her HUD using the infrared and millimetric settings, but got nothing. "Serena, the place is too hot for an infrared, I can't see anything. There's too much interference getting in the way of the other scans too."

Serena nodded at Amy's report. They were just going to have to wing it, like usual. At least they knew the nuclear weapons were in there. "Lita, open the door up. Raye, Amy, go in first."

"Why with Amy…?" Raye started to ask, before realizing that Amy was holding her weapon. "Oh."

"Oh, and try not to hit the nuclear weapon with gunfire," Serena reminded them, checking the magazine in her M4 CQB-R.

"I think we have some experience in that," Mina replied, winking at Amy. She just shrugged and readied the M16A4 for action.

* * *

"Status on the missiles," 5 Golf 5 asked one of the technicians.

"They're fuelled. All we need is to put the coordinates that the CIC sent us, arm the missiles, and we'll be ready to go."

"Which ones have nuclear warheads?" 5 Golf 5 asked. The technician only pointed to three of the missiles.

"Only three of them?" he wondered.  
"Yeah, we're going to have a couple in reserve. Make sure that they know we mean business."

Meanwhile, a couple of soldiers were watching one of the youma in a patrol pattern.

"Who made these things?" one of them said, squinting at the writing on the side of it.

"Huh, it says on the side here."

"It's in Korean or Japanese…I can't read it." If the soldier could have read it, the Hangol on the side of the UGV patrolling the entrance to the hanger would have said "Hyeonjun Heavy Industries."

Suddenly, the entrance to the hanger was wrenched open, the metal screeching loudly as it was forced aside.


	71. Chapter LXIX: Empty Quiver, Part III

**Chapter LXIX: Empty Quiver, Part III**

**1100hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Take cover at once when you hear the attack sound. If you cannot reach home in ten minutes…try to find some solid cover…if you hear the fallout warning, seek the nearest and best cover as quickly as you can." Protect and Survive, Action After Warnings._

_"But you tell me, Over and over and over again, my friend, Ah, you don't believe, We're on the eve of destruction." Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction._

* * *

"Amy, Raye, go!"

Raye and Amy charged in, with Raye firing her grenade launcher off at a group of youma on the right of the hanger. They went up in flames. Amy snapped off accurate bursts from the M16, destroying a youma in front of her and sending another careening off course. Not as good as Raye, but it was something.

Wisely, 5 Golf 5 had stationed all of the UGVs toward the front of the hanger where the entrance was in order to prevent causalities among his own forces. From his count, ten youma remained, and they counterattacked against the two soldiers that had burst into the room.

"Serena, I'm losing the door!" Lita yelled. The steel door had given way at first, but now it fought back despite Lita's strength. "Fuck!" She couldn't hold any longer, and the door clanged shut.

"What was that?" Raye said loudly, over the din of gunfire. From what she could see, there were five cruise missiles at the front of the hanger, about two hundred meters away. Technicians scrambled for cover as the UGVs returned fire, blanketing the area in machine gun fire.

"Uh…the door! The door is shut!" Amy shouted.

"Lita, get this fucking door open!" Serena yelled.

"We have to get in there!" Mina screamed in panic. Her trigger finger twitched nervously as she thought about Amy in there, outnumbered and outgunned. They hadn't come all this way just to be killed, and Mina was not about to let that happen.

Lita remembered that she was holding onto one of Raye things…what was it? She felt around in her lower pants pocket and found the two bricks of C4. "Wait, I have Raye's C4!"

"Goddammit, use it on the door!" Mina yelled, almost hysterical.

"Calm down, Mina," Serena said. Although if someone I loved was on the other side of the door being shot at, I would be freaking out as well, she thought to herself. "Lita, use it."

"On it." Lita places the two bricks of C4 and quickly molded it to fit the area that the door met the ground. She placed the blasting caps in the explosive and attached them to the wires, which then led to the detonator.

"Guys, get out of the way." Serena and Mina went on the right side of the door while Lita took cover on the left, detonator in hand.

"Amy, Raye," Serena said over the radio.

"Yeah!" was the stressed response from Amy. A string of bullets snapped over her head, making her duck behind the destroyed youma she was using for cover.

"We're coming through the doors using explosives, you'd better get away from them," Serena told her.

"Got it. Raye!"

She had also heard the order. "I'm coming over to your position!" She fired a long burst from her Glock 18 before displacing to Amy's position on the right side of the hanger.

"Be advised, they're almost ready to launch," Luna reported, only adding to the drama at hand.

"Do it," Serena ordered, seeing that everything was in place.

"Fire in the hole!" Lita yelled. She pressed the detonator.

The electric shock from the detonator caused the normally stable C4 explosive to detonate at a speed of 8,092 meters a second, causing the door to buckle, then to finally break against the strain of the explosion. However, using two bricks of C4 explosive also caused part of the wall to give way, blasting that outward as well into the hanger.

"Jesus!" Raye exclaimed, getting her head down as debris rained everywhere.

"I thought you were only going to blow the door off!" Serena said irritably to Lita, her ears ringing.

"Sorry!"

There wasn't much time to argue, as Amy and Raye were still in deep shit.

"Move forward!" Lita charged through the newly formed entrance, firing her M249 on full auto, suppressing one of the squads in the hanger. Serena and Mina were next, with Mina sniping at everything that moved. Serena moved up to Lita, tapped her on the shoulder, which was the order for Lita to advance forward. She continued to do so, only stopping to toss a grenade at two soldiers hiding behind some sandbags. It blew up, sending them tumbling back, along with some dismembered limbs.

Raye and Amy moved up next on their side of the hanger, destroying the last of the youma and starting in on the remaining human soldiers.

"I got this!" Raye fired her shotgun repeatedly, hitting a soldier who tried to sprint from cover. He went down.

* * *

"5 Golf 5, these guys are killing us!" his XO reported before being hit with a 7.62mm round from Mina's battle rifle.

"Fuck!" 5 Golf 5 cursed, ducking behind the sandbags in front of the Tomahawks. He sure hoped that they would be able to get out the way before they launched.

"I need all fire focused on those two soldiers advancing on our left," he ordered, calmly. "4, 5, target the machine gunner on the right. Go!"

Three of the PMC soldiers engaged Raye and Amy, pinning them down with fire from their P90s. 5.7mm rounds zipped through the air, snapping all around them as they tried to advance forward. At the same time, two of the PMC machine gunners with their HK21s opened up, pinning down Serena, Lita and Mina on their side of the hanger.

"They've got us pinned!" Lita yelled, switching briefly to her shotgun as three more of the PMC troopers started to advance forward, their guns blazing away at her position. A slug shell quickly felled one of them, but the soldiers kept advancing.

"Come on girls!" Serena shouted encouragingly. "Push forward!"

That was enough. Amy and Raye broke from cover and fired from the hip, downing the advancing PMC troopers. Mina continued to engage hostiles from a distance with her battle rifle, and Serena and Lita lay down a withering suppression fire of their own to counteract the PMC's attack.

5 Golf 5 was killed almost immediately after the SAILOR team pushed forward to the Tomahawks. Several rounds from either Mina or Serena's guns probably did him in, but in the confusion, it was extremely hard to tell. The rest of the PMC unit was felled in a matter of seconds from the combined fire from the SAILOR team.

* * *

"Come out with your hands in the air!" Lita yelled at about five or six ground crew that had been hiding in a sandbag shelter near the back of the hanger.

"We'll shoot!" Raye added forcefully.

"Guys, you're speaking in Japanese. They can't understand you," Mina pointed out to them. "Hey, come out with your hands up!" she repeated. This time, the ground crew stepped out of the bunker, with their hands up.

"Disable the nuclear weapons!" Serena screamed at one of the captured technicians.

"I can't, they're going to launch!" the technician shouted back. The engines on the back of the Tomahawks sputtered, ready to fly off the rails.

"Luna, some help here!" Amy shouted into her radio, frantically looking over her tablet computer that she had whipped out from her rucksack.

* * *

"Beryl, launch procedures are complete and ready to go."

"Fire the weapons then," she ordered. "It's time to end this, once and for all." Kunzite went over to a special locker in the room and after a handprint and iris scan, the locker opened up to reveal two sets of keys, one for him, one for Beryl. He tossed one to her, and kept the other one as he walked over to a special panel that was right by where Beryl was sitting. On it sat two keyslots for the respective keys. This would launch the missiles, but only if both sets of keys were inserted and turned at the same time.

"Turn the keys in the five…four…three…two…one…"

* * *

"Serena, what are we going to do?!" Raye shouted in panic.

"SAILOR Moon, let me talk to Mercury, and I can talk her through it," Luna said over the radio, after hearing them panic for long enough.

"Do it!"

Luna switched gears, bringing up the directory of files that held the guidance software and programming.

"Okay, Amy, we're going to disable the guidance system and set so that it can't go anywhere," Luna calmly replied.

"Walk me through it, and we don't have much time!" Even Amy was starting to lose her cool; well, if you had a couple of nuclear missiles ready to launch, keeping one's patience was a tricky order.  
"Okay, access the directory that I'm sending you, and then you should be able to do it from there."

Luna already had the directory up. Since the CIC was commanding the entire operation, it had the launch access command to remotely fire the missiles. If the guidance was set to zero or an invalid destination, they could buy some time while the team could disable the missiles and warheads.

Amy accessed the directory and reset the destination to an invalid location, forcing the onboard computer to reset and ask the host server for new directions.

* * *

"Why aren't the missiles launching?!" Beryl asked. Her rage was beyond the boiling point.

"Ma'am…the guidance systems…they've been set to an invalid range," the technician Sorenson reported. "They're asking for new directions."

"Well give them one then!" That would take another couple of minutes though. Enough time to send in another QRF force along with youma units.

* * *

"Okay, how are we going to shut down these nuclear weapons?" Lita asked, after that close encounter.

"We don't have to disable the nuclear weapons proper," Mina started to say, but was interrupted by Amy.

"They might be able to repair the launch vehicles, so we have to…"

Serena had to hold up her hand to keep them from talking over each other. "One thing at a time guys. Luna, what do you suggest?"

"Standby…okay, there's five of you, right? And five missiles there, right?"

"There's five missiles, but it doesn't appear that all of them have nuclear warheads." She turned to the captive group of technicians.

"Hey," Serena interrogated one of the technicians. "Which ones have the nuclear warheads?"  
Like before, he pointed out the three in the center, with the ones on the periphery lacking the warheads. They were decoys, making sure that the nuclear armed ones got through.

"Okay, where's the other nuclear weapons?" Serena interrogated.

"In that storage facility over there," the captive technician pointed out. Serena looked at another room in the hanger, one that had a big "RESTRICTED ACCESS" sign on it.

"Bring them over here. Lita, watch these guys."

"We have to have clearance…" the technician started to protest, but was silenced when Amy remotely opened the door.

"Yeah, you should have better security," Lita winked. "Come on, we don't have all day." The ground crew reluctantly walked over to the storage room, not having understood what Lita had just said to them.

"Okay, Mina, Amy, Raye," Serena ordered. "Get up to those missiles and disable them."

"On it." The three of them found some step ladders that had been used by the ground crew and brought them over to the missiles.

"Luna, walk us through disabling the missiles," Amy said, standing by the ladder.

"Standby. I'm going to bring up schematics for that missile." Luna accessed the database for the specifics of the Tomahawk missile.

"Alright, here's where the fuel lines are," she reported. "Open up the access panel here and cut them at this point." Amy's HUD illuminated the point where Luna had indicated where the fuel lines were. A couple of seconds of bashing open the panel, the three of them had cut the fuel lines and TH-dimer fuel was leaking out everywhere.

"Gross," Mina said, watching the fuel spew all over the place. "How flammable is this stuff?"

"You have to get pretty hot to burn this. Sixty degrees is I think, the flashpoint," Amy said, quickly looking it up on her HUD. Luna's voice brought them back to the subject at hand.

"Next is the guidance system. Cut those wires there and break the onboard computer."

Again, there was some more unscrewing of access panels and tearing of wires.

"That should be good," Luna reported, looking at the damage the three girls had inflicted. "That'll slow them down for a little bit."

"Serena, we're done, here," Mina yelled out.

Serena turned around from what she was doing and yelled back to them. "Amy, Mina, work on the other missiles. Raye, come over here."

Serena and Lita were standing around the small boxes that Amy noted had been stored in here. Sure enough, they had been marked as "meat" containers.

"Do you know how to disable the nuclear warheads?" Serena asked in her somewhat passible English to their prisoners.

The ground crew shook their heads.

"Well, now that you're here, you can get those nuclear weapons out of those missiles there." Again, the ground crew reluctantly got to work unhooking the nuclear weapons from the missiles. Normally, it would take a lot longer for them to get the warheads off, but since they had armed and very trigger happy soldiers watching over them, they must have set a record in nuclear weapon removal.

"Serena, we've finished disabling the missiles," Mina reported. There was a little bit more grease and oil on Amy and her uniform, but they seemed satisfied with their work.

"I can take a look at the warheads," Amy volunteered, gesturing toward the warheads that the ground crew had just taken off of the missiles. They brought them over to where they had placed the other nuclear warheads.

"Okay, I don't think they're any more use to us," Serena said to Raye and Lita. "Guys, scram. Get out of here." She pointed toward the door. That didn't have to be translated; the ground crew went scrambling for the exit.

While the SAILOR team was doing that, Luna noted on the radio frequencies that the PMC was using that another attack was in progress. Took them long enough, Luna thought.

"Alert, there's another platoon of PMC soldiers heading your way. Suggest that you hurry up there and disable the warheads, over."

"Did we get rid of the QRF?" Serena griped, reloading her M4.

"Probably," Lita replied, making sure that her M249 was in good order. "We've inflicted a lot of casualties on them."

"Raye!" Amy's voice caught Raye's attention for a second.

"Yeah, what is it?" She jogged over to where Amy was standing by the nuclear weapons, examining them with her HUD.

"Here's your weapon back. Thanks for letting me use it." She gave the M16A4 back, unslinging it from her shoulder. Amy fumbled with her other weapon for a second before straightening that out.

"No problem," Raye said back, taking the weapon from her.

Serena saw Amy turn back to looking at the warheads on the trollies, with an intense look on her face. She walked over to her, keeping an eye on the entrance to hanger.

"How is it going?" she asked.

"Serena," Amy said, after looking over the warhead. "I don't know if I can disable it for you."

"But you did so in America," Serena replied, her eyes narrowing.

"I removed the jury-rigged remote detonation device, not the internal components," she protested. "I don't know how it'll go if I try to start playing around with things inside of it."

"Okay, this is what we'll do. Lita, give Raye your M249, and start taking those weapons over to the storage room over there."

"Why did you send the crew away then?" Lita grumbled.

"Sorry. It sounded like a good idea at the time," Serena shrugged, then turned her attention back to the hanger entrance. Lita bitched at Serena under her breath for her shortsightedness, but moved the W80 warheads on the trollies back toward the storage room.

* * *

8 Juliet 3 was just a rookie when it came to this soldiering stuff. Having gotten kicked out of the Ukrainian Militsiya for roughing up one too many civilians (which was saying something in an agency that routinely did such things), she joined up with the PMC after deciding that her "asskicking" skills (in her words) were going to waste for the local mob boss. It turned out that kneecapping random people who owed money to her boss wasn't exactly great experience for the PMC. Oh well. That's why she was transferred here for a little bit more training (and the extra money helped as well).

"Okay, all Juliet units, standby for dynamic entry," their team leader, 1 Juliet 3, said over the radio. Thirty PMC soldiers were stacked up by the now very large entrance, thanks to Lita's handiwork. To their sides, youma lined up to go into the breach, drawing fire from the flesh and blood soldiers.

"All units check in," Soshkin asked over the radio.

"1 Juliet 3 reporting in."

"1 Echo 9 reporting in."

"1 Tango 2 reporting."

"All callsigns, let the youma units go in first. Breach the hanger ten seconds after the youma enter."

"That's affirmative," 1 Juliet 3 said over the radio.

"Hey, Sofiya," another member of the squad, 7 Juliet 3, said to her. "You ready to do this?"

"Yeah," she replied in a very heavy accent. English did not come naturally to her, but it was a requirement of the PMC that it be spoken. "I'm ready. I'm just worried because the QRF almost got wiped out."

"Hey, we're going to get these guys."

"7 and 8, quiet," their squad leader ordered. "Command, send the word. We're ready."

"Sending the youma units in."

* * *

"Lita, you got the weapons in there?!" Serena yelled at her.

"Yeah, I've got the last of the nukes in here!" Lita yelled back. "Coming on out!"

"Just in time," Raye muttered. She could see some faces poking their heads in and out of the entrance to the hanger.

"Amy, lock that door down. Make sure that it's really hard to get into."

"Done." Amy locked the door remotely, then sealed it with the electromagnetic lock on the inside there. She then set a ridiculously long and complex password so that no one would be able to get in there without some serious cryptology work. The only way anyone was getting in there now if they blew it open with explosives.

"Okay Serena, it's done," Amy reported to her, putting the tablet computer away and getting out her MP5-PDW.

"Serena," Luna interrupted again. "PMC forces are sending in the youma units first so that they'll draw fire. Estimate size of youma units about fifteen to twenty five units."

"Ah shit," Lita said, sighting her M249 down toward the entrance. Maybe using that much plastic explosive was a bad idea, she thought to herself. Lita took stock of the ammo that she was carrying; of the munitions she had started out with, she only had one more full drum of ammo for the machine gun, two grenades, and a couple of flashbangs.

"Brace yourselves!" Serena screamed out to the SAILOR team. They were behind cover that the previous defenders had built, and hoped that they were going to be more useful to them than before.

* * *

"All callsigns, execute, execute!"

The youma units rolled in.

* * *

"Holy shit!" Raye shouted out. Five youma charged through the door, this time, armed with two machine guns each on their sides. One even had a grenade launcher like herself strapped on in place of the machine gun. Whatever half measures the Nakanishi Group had taken before, they weren't holding back on this one. She fired a couple of bursts from her M16 before switching to her Masterkey, firing off a couple of slug rounds. Three of the youma burst into flame or sputtered to a halt, but more of them charged in, guns blazing.

"Keep up the fire!" Serena yelled, depressing the trigger on her M4, this time on full auto. The entire magazine was emptied in under five seconds, but a youma was dead.

"Running low on ammo!" Lita screamed over the din of battle. She removed the spent bullet link from the feed, and reached for her last remaining drum of ammunition.

"Just keep firing!" was the reply from Serena.

Mina sighted down the HK417 on another youma that came blitzing through the entrance, the twin machine gun mounts firing wildly. Five rapid rounds from her weapon, targeted at the optics and weak spots of the UGV quickly brought it to a halt.

"Incoming hostiles!" Amy pointed out, highlighting them on their HUDs.

* * *

8 Juliet 3 charged in, along with the rest of her squad and immediately came under fire.

"You see them?!" 7 Juliet 3 yelled to her over the chatter of gunfire.

8 Juliet 3 slid into cover next to a destroyed youma; if nothing else, the relatively large UGVs provided excellent cover for advancing infantry. Even in death, they provided some sort of service. Unlike those fleshy humans. She peeked around the cover and saw a machine gunner firing in her direction. Several bullets pinged off of the metal, sending her back into hiding.

"Yeah! There's a machine gunner, 100 meters out, behind those sandbags!" 8 Juliet 3 swung out from cover and fired a couple bursts from her P90 at the machine gunner, causing the soldier to duck.

Not even a minute into the gunfight, there were already cries for help from people who had been hit by the enemy's fire.

"This is 2 Echo 9, 1 Echo 9 just got hit!" 1 Juliet 3 turned to see half of that squad get ripped apart by a stream of gunfire from a machine gun, assault rifles and a battle rifle. Even above the din of battle, he could tell weapons apart pretty easily. AKs made a distinctive sound, so they were out. He had been training with his own squad and the other PMC units on the island for awhile now, and could point out the specific weapons that the PMC liked to use. The P90 was a great weapon, along with the HK21s and occasional M16 weapon on their side. Sometimes they carried auto shotguns, but those had been given to the QRF, to which they were certainly not a part of. Not that it helped them in the first place it seemed.

"Goddamn," 1 Juliet 3, hissed to himself. "3 and 4, use your machine guns to suppress enemy positions. Does anyone see how many there are?!"

"Sir, there's five of them there!" 8 Juliet 3 reported to the squad leader. She had gotten a quick count after sticking her head out again. It almost cost her dearly, as several aimed shots flew past, hitting against the destroyed youma.

"Only five?!" 1 Juliet 3 had heard that this team was special, but only five members doing this much damage? What else did that fleet have out there that could do such a thing? He pushed his inner fears away and got back to commanding his squad. It was the least he could do in a situation rapidly falling apart.

"Keep advancing! Use the youma as cover!"

By now, there were husks of youma everywhere, littering the hanger turned battleground.

"Be advised," Soshkin in the CIC announced to all the PMC units there, "Watch your fire and do not destroy the Tomahawk missiles."

"Oh, thanks for that," 8 Juliet 3 muttered to herself. That's the last thing they needed, was the CIC trying to micromanage the battle from the safety of their protected room. She leaned around from cover again, but more incoming rounds made her back off from that course of action.

* * *

"PMC soldiers are fifty meters out!" Amy shouted, ducking down behind some sandbags. She could see them ducking and weaving throughout the hanger, advancing steadily against the SAILOR team.

"I can see that!" Serena yelled back, firing her M4. "Raye, how many grenades left?!"

Raye checked her ammunition pouches. There were no grenades left, but she remembered loading them into the MGL. "Only six left!"

"Well, use them!"

Raye fired the remaining grenades in her launcher off, spreading them out over the entire length of the hanger. Explosions shot up all across the advancing PMC forces, but was tempered by the fact that there were so many destroyed youma that they absorbed most of the explosions, rendering the attack ineffective.

"I'm out of grenades!" Raye reported, tossing the MGL aside, temporarily. She dropped to one knee and fired off a burst from her M16A4, almost hitting a PMC soldier near the back of the hanger.

Lita guesstimated that she had half a belt left in her machine gun. Not enough to keep the PMC soldiers off of them. There was no way that they could hold these guys off before being overrun. Not unless they took the initiative.

"Serena, I'm going to bluff an attack," Lita said over the radio.

"What?!" Serena yelled back. It was mostly due to the loudness of the battle and not surprise at Lita's suggestion.

"Serena, I'm going to fire a long burst with the machine gun!" Lita said back, louder this time. "Attack when I do so!"

"Got it!" Serena liked that plan. "Raye, get ready to move up!"

"Copy that."

Lita squeezed down the trigger on the M249 and let loose an extremely long burst of gunfire. It didn't need to kill a lot of people, just to scare the enemy into thinking that they were going to outright attack them. Serena and Raye charged forward from cover, firing their weapons from the hip and moving up to new positions in front of them. They dove behind some destroyed youma from before, and started to engage soldiers at close range, hitting a couple of them and causing the formation to waver in confidence.

* * *

1 Juliet 3 saw that they were taking too many causalities for this operation to succeed. All of their youma destroyed, along with almost half of their platoon taken out. The bluff attack by the SAILOR team was all it took to break them.

"This is 1 Juliet 3, situation is untenable, we need to fall back and regroup!" he yelled in to his radio, upon hearing Lita open up with her machine gun and seeing Serena and Raye charge forward.

"CIC, we need to get out of here!" another squad leader, 1 Tango 2 reported, panic in his voice.

Soshkin saw that this was going nowhere fast. He gave the order to retreat. "All callsigns, fall back, fall back!"

8 Juliet 3 was still hiding behind the destroyed youma when the call went out to retreat. She ran out of there as fast as she could, bullets snapping around her heels. She would later be captured by Marines and extradited back to the Ukraine, where she would end up working for the same mob boss.

"How many soldiers did we lose?" Beryl asked, dumbfound at what had just occurred.

"Only half of the force was lost," Kunzite said. "But all the youma were destroyed."

"Great. Just fucking great."

"Ma'am," Soshkin said to her. "I suggest that you get out of here immediately. They're closing in, and I don't want you to…"

"Thank you, Soshkin, but there's not going to be any running today," Beryl shot back. Except, maybe to my quarters for one last stand, she thought. If I'm going to die, then I'm going to be comfortable then.

* * *

"Is everyone okay?!" Serena yelled to the rest of the team. "Is anyone hit?"

"Nah, I'm still here," Lita said, standing up to one knee and surveying the scene around them.

"I'm good," Raye replied.

"We're both fine," Mina said back to Serena. Amy looked a bit shaken up, but it probably had been one of the largest gunfights they had been in since the Sudan, and one in the many they had just gone through today. It would be hard to find someone who wasn't incredibly stressed by recent events. Even for someone as stoic as Amy.

"Amy, get the President on the radio," Serena ordered.

"Luna…"

"I'm on it."

* * *

POTUS was watching the battle unfold when the COS ran into the room, holding her cell phone.

"Madame President," the COS said to her. "It's the SAILOR team for you."

"Give the phone here." She took the phone from the COS and answered it.

"Hello, Madame President?" Luna said to POTUS.

"Yes, Luna, isn't it? Good to hear from you. Have you dealt with the situation?"

"Yes Ma'am, the nuclear weapons cannot be launched from the facility. We've disabled the launch vehicles."

POTUS leaned back in her chair and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Can you put me in contact with the team there?"

"I can, but it'll be a little bit spotty."

"Do it."

Luna switched over from talking to POTUS to SAILOR Moon.

"Serena, the President wants to talk to you."

Serena didn't even have to say for Amy to translate. She just nodded her head in acknowledgement of the task that Serena wanted done.

"Madame President, uh…um…we've secured the nuclear weapons and have….uh…" Serena stumbled through the English phrases until Amy held up her hand, wanting to give a better rendition of what had just happened.

"Madame President, this is Amy. We've removed the nuclear weapons and have rendered them inaccessible to the enemy. The launch vehicles have been disabled as well. You may send in your special forces in, if they're not already on the island."

"Thank you so much," POTUS said to Amy. "Are you going after Beryl now?"

"That is affirmative. She is very close by, and we feel like we can get her."

"I'm sorry Madam President, but we really must be going," Serena interrupted. "We will report when we've dealt with Beryl."

"Understood. Good luck." POTUS ended the call.

* * *

"Serena, we also have to go after the data servers as well," Amy said after the call to the President had ended.

"Why can't you access it from here?" Serena asked.

"Serena, I've sent all the data I could from the Nakanishi servers to Luna, and there is no mention of the healing solution formula on there. It must be on a different, more secure intranet."

Serena had little idea what Amy was talking about, but she did understand that they could not get what they wanted.

"Goddammit…okay, Mina and Amy, go after the server room where that data is stored once we hit the CIC. Do you have it on your computer there?"

Amy nodded.

"Yes, I pulled up the full schematics on the base once I was able to go through all of the data you guys gave me. I've located the CIC and can direct you toward their position."

"Any other suggestions, Luna?" Serena asked.

Luna was about to say no, but then something caught her eye on the layout of the CIC.

"Wait, it looks like there's access to the servers from the CIC. They're on an intranet that is not linked to the main database."

"So we don't have to go after the server room then?" Amy wondered. She looked at her tablet computer and sure enough, there was a secure terminal location marked on one of the blueprints for extremely sensitive information that was not connected to the database proper.

"I don't think so. It would make things significantly easier. Plus, the destruct function must be in the CIC as well, so you might as well take the CIC out," Luna suggested.

Serena nodded. "Alright then, let's go after Beryl. We'll be able to access the data in the CIC as well. Two birds with one stone."


	72. Chapter LXX: Command, conquered

**Chapter LXX: Command, conquered.**

**1200hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"They are all around, smashing rifles, they bring in the wounded every minute, it is a horrible sight. We will be waiting for you guys to help, this is the only thing I guess that can be done…but shells were dropping all night, faster than hell. Damage terrific. Too much for guys to take, enemy heavy cross shelling and bombing. They have got us all around and from the skies." Irving Strobing, one of the last messages before the American surrender at the Battle of Corregidor._

* * *

The SAILOR team retraced their steps back to the train terminal, except that this time around ,there were almost no soldiers around and few youma to give resistance.

"Which way to the CIC?" Amy asked Luna.

"At the next junction, take a left and head straight for a hundred meters. Take the next right and…"

"Luna, you don't have to give out all at once," Amy interrupted. Poor Luna was starting to sound like a GPS navigation device, while necessary, was also a complete waste of her time if the SAILOR team could take care of themselves. " I'll mark it on our HUDs and we can go from there."

"Understood."

Amy did so, and a couple of red-colored dots on the team's HUDs indicated where they needed to go.

"SAILOR Mercury, there's an armory about twenty five meters from the junction there," Luna reported, taking another look at the blueprints. "You might want to stock up on ammunition." The problem with trying to assault a place this large was the amount of planning and intelligence required in ordered to be successful. Basically, the SAILOR team had been winging it, and had gotten lucky so far.

"Thanks Luna." Again, Amy marked it on their HUDs, this time using a yellow dot.

"How are you holding up?" Mina asked Amy as they prowled the halls. She stopped at a corner, peeked around it, and then advanced down toward the waypoint marker.

"I'm fine, thank you," Amy tersely answered back. Mina frowned for a second, but figured that this wasn't the time or place to be making small talk. She was certainly concerned about Amy, but they could fret all they wanted once they got themselves out of this stupid underground base and back to what remained of their lives back home.

"Okay, here's the armory," Serena said, interrupting Mina and Amy's conversation. She tried the handle on the door. It was locked of course.

"Give me a second," Amy muttered to her. The door was unlocked after a couple of commands from her computer to the database, telling it that proper access had been granted.

Serena tried the door again. It opened up, but several shots from what sounded like a pistol sent her tumbling back.

"You okay?!" Mina asked her, helping her back up on her feet.

"Yeah, I just got hit in the vest," she gasped.

"Amy, take care of her for a second," Mina asked. Amy went over to Serena, who propped herself up against one of the walls.

"You see anyone in there?" she asked Lita. Lita poked her head out from cover and saw two soldiers hiding behind a caged off section where people would get their weapons.

"Two soldiers. Maybe more," she whispered to Mina.

"Let's get in there. Raye, prep the flashbangs. On my mark." Mina held up her left hand and counted down from three.

"Let me go!" a voice yelled out, interrupting the countdown.

"Goddammit, get back here, that's an order!"

"Don't shoot, don't shoot!" A woman in British DPMs emerged from behind one of the desks in the armory.

"Throw down your weapons and come out with your hands above your head!" Mina yelled into the armory. "That includes you, whoever is shooting!"

Mina heard someone grumble, then a clatter of a pistol being dropped to the ground. A couple of seconds later, the two people that Lita had seen inside came out, hands above their heads. The other person was wearing US Army ACUs, and didn't look to be very happy about surrendering.

"Lita, Raye, secure them." Lita and Raye did so, flex cuffing them and making the two of them drop to their knees.

"Anyone else in there?" Mina asked both of them.

"No, there's only the two of us," the woman said to her, obviously very scared. She had a very pronounced Lancashire accent, making it somewhat difficult for Mina to understand her.

"What's your name?"

"Patricia. You're from down south?" Again, that slight Received Pronunciation accent gave away that Mina had lived in the UK for a little bit.

"You could say that," Mina cryptically said to her. No need to give away personal details now.

"Why are you in a military uniform?" Lita asked her.

She looked at her confused, until Mina stepped in and translated it from Japanese to English.

"Uh…they made us get into these once the siege started. Look, I didn't have anything to do with the attacks or anything like that…"

Mina held up her hand. "Fine. I believe you." She turned her attention to the man sitting next to her. He didn't look very happy at all. Probably because he wanted to keep on fighting, even though it would have more than likely resulted in his death and the death of his female friend there, Mina noted.

"What's your name?" Mina said to the grumpy looking man, sitting beside the woman. He looked about thirty, extremely thin and with a pointy nose.

"Jorgenson," he replied. Norwegian, she guessed, from the accent and the name. "And that's all you need to know."

"Alright then," Mina shrugged.

"Mina." Amy's voice caught her attention. She walked over to Amy and Serena, who was just getting up.

"Hey, I'm better now. Just got the wind knocked out of me," Serena said, brushing herself off. "What do we have here?" she asked, walking over to the two flexcuffed prisoners.

"Just a couple of civilians," Mina said to her.

"Well, we can't exactly keep them. So cut them loose and tell them to scram."

"Serena…" Lita half-heartily protested, but she was right. They were in no position to take prisoners, and shooting them was not exactly an option. PMC troopers were fair game, but if they surrendered or ran away, they weren't about to shoot them in back or in cold blood.

Raye just shrugged at Serena's order. She got out her knife and cut the two of them loose.

"Okay, let's see what's in the armory," Serena said, entering through the door.

Thanks to the surrendering civilians, they had left the locked door open and the SAILOR team could now stock up on ammunition and explosives. Shelves of ammunition and guns lined the walls, providing whatever they needed for the mission at hand.

"Raye, here's a bunch of 40mm grenades," Lita pointed out. They were all nicely stacked out in the open, on top of a shelf.

"Thank god for that," she said,

The rest of the team stuffed their pockets with flashbangs, grenades, magazines and ammunition, sorely needed after several hours of intense fighting.

"Amy, you should grab one of those P90s over there," Mina said, looking at a rack of the said weapon. She also noted some emergency rations next to them; they said "High Calorie, Emergency Ration." She grabbed a couple, just in case. You never knew if you might need them, especially after all the running and fighting that they had been doing the last couple of hours. Mina stuffed them in a back pocket and continued to point at the P90s. "You wouldn't have to bum off of these guys," she joked, jabbing her thumb at Raye and Lita, who just smiled back.

One thing about picking up enemy weapons was that it was generally inadvisable; they could be booby trapped, poorly maintained, low quality, and a host of other problems that could be avoided by sticking with the standard issued weapon. Unfortunately, Amy's weapon was not cutting it in this particular situation, so having something else that would give a little extra punch would be better than nothing.

"Sure…I guess." Amy picked up the weapon; like her MP5-PDW, it was extremely light in comparison with Lita's M249 or Mina's HK417, but then again, it served a different purpose. The P90 on the rack came with a scope and a two point sling, conveniently enough. She slung it behind her back, adjusting the weapon to suit her figure, and grabbed several magazines off of the shelf.

"Okay, is everyone set to go? Good." Serena leaned out of the door, checked for enemies, and exited the armory.

About fifteen minutes of extremely tense walking toward the CIC, the SAILOR team stopped short of their destination, taking a knee near one of the corners that lead to the entrance of the CIC.

"Looks like that CIC is pretty heavily guarded," Raye noted, peeking her head around the corner. Several youma and soldiers lit up on her HUD. The hallway that they were in suddenly opened up to a large foyer, with the CIC in the center, behind steel doors, armed guards and youma.

"Course of action?" Amy asked. Straight to the point, as usual.

"Okay, there's a main entrance, but there also appears to be a rear entrance to the CIC as well," Serena said, tapping her HUD with her finger. Luna had given them Both are heavily guarded. The rear entrance is near the other hallway we passed back there."

"Lita, Raye, you'll take the rear entrance and prevent any escape from there. Understood?"

Both Lita and Raye nodded.

"Good. Go!"

* * *

There was no point in getting upset now. The nuclear weapons were gone, period. Beryl sat back in the chair in the CIC, looking at the lights on the ceiling. She had completely underestimated the abilities of the SAILOR team, and now her creation was coming to destroy her.

"Beryl, we should send in the youma to take out the rest of the Marines down there," Kunzite suggested, distracting her from her self-flagellation. "Even if they aren't all that effective against the SAILOR team."

"Fine." Beryl went back to looking at the big screens on the wall. They were sure kicking ass, but then again, the SAILOR team was giving the PMC a run for its money, with causalities mounting and several youma units down. And the nuclear weapons...goddammit, that was one huge setback. The only thing they could do now was limit the amount of damage that the SAILOR team was inflicting on the fortress here. And maybe that was a foregone conclusion.

* * *

Amy looked at her tablet computer, routing everything that could be shut off into one single line of code. When executed…well, the results would be predicable.

"Serena, I can shut down everything from here," she said, looking up from her work. "Those UAVs outside, the guns…everything but the youma."

Serena shook her head at that. "Not yet Amy. When we assault the CIC, shut it all down to distract down and then we'll charge in. Sound good?"

Amy nodded at Serena's course of action.

"Sure. Whatever you say."

"Luna, do you know anything about the guards stationed at the CIC? Are they elite or something like that?" Serena figured that for a highly valuable area like this, Beryl was going to have the best that they could afford guarding this place.

Luna did a personnel check for the CIC guards, comparing it to what units they had served on during their military years.

"That's affirmative," Luna replied. "The platoon guarding the CIC is comprised of the following; five Russian Naval Infantry, three Alpha Group members, five Spetsnaz GRU members, five French Foreign Legion Members, three Polish GROM members, and the rest consist of individual members from various other special operations units."

"Like?" Serena was a least a little bit curious to know what type of enemy they would be facing. Would they be relatively elite, or "elite" elite?

"SAILOR Moon, that list could go on for awhile," Luna cautioned. "Advise that you use that time to prepare for the assault."

Serena sighed, but Luna was right. "Okay, thanks Luna. We'll get ready then."

Luna heard Serena sighing, and decided that it would be at least best if she sent them all of the information that they needed. "If it'll make you feel better, I'll send it to Amy. She can put it up on your HUDs."

"That would be much appreciated," Serena said. "Thanks."

* * *

"Artemis, make sure that Lita and Raye have all up to date information on what we just discussed." Luna was busy at her computer, making sure it was ready for the torrent of information that would be uploaded to it. From there, it would be stored at a secure location offsite somewhere in Japan.

"I'm on it."

* * *

Lita and Raye slowly made their way around to the alternate entrance to the CIC, making sure that there was no more resistance or surprises.

"Sure is quiet," Raye commented, checking around a corner. Clear.

"A little bit too quiet for my tastes," Lita said back.

"How far is the rear entrance to the CIC?"

Lita tapped her HUD. "Ten meters to this next corner, then another one hundred straight to the rear entrance. There's a couple of more intersections along the way, so there'll be some cover for us."

"Yeah, hate to get shot up now, after all we've been through,"

"Coming up on the next corner." Again, Raye peeked to see if there was anything.

"Yep, that's a lot of firepower." She could see at least fifteen youma and a squad of troopers patrolling the entrance. It was like the one that the rest of the SAILOR team was going to assault, just slightly smaller. The sliding doors opened up as a couple of technicians left the place, ostensibly to try to escape the coming battle that would certainly find its way to their protected CIC. Better to try to get out now and beg for mercy than to have the enemy banging down the gates with bloodlust in mind. Kind of like what was about to happen.

"Lita, Raye, are you in position?" Serena asked.

"Affirmative. Ready to move in on the entrance. Be advised, it is pretty heavily guarded so we might take some time to get in."

"That's fine. Just keep up the pressure on the entrance so that no one gets in or out."

"Roger that. Just give the word."

"SAILOR Mars, Jupiter, got something for you." Artemis' voice interrupted their conversation with Serena.

"Yeah, go ahead Artemis," Raye said.

"Advise, you've got multiple special operations units in there." Artemis went over the information that had been passed to Serena earlier.

"So we should be careful then," Raye replied, after Artemis had finished.

"Correct," was his response. At least somebody was looking after them today.

"Thanks then," Raye said. "See you on the other side."

* * *

Serena looked at her HUD, then back to Amy and Mina.

"They're in position. We move in ten seconds. Amy, get ready to terminate everything."

Amy finished writing up the last line of code that would shut down every single system in the fortress bar the emergency lights, and maybe even that if she was feeling particularly nasty.

"EXECUTE: Y/N?"

Serena counted down in a whispered voice. "Five…four…three…two…one."

Amy hit the "Y" key.

* * *

Inside of the CIC, the situation was rapidly deteriorating. While they were holding their own against the combined fleet outside, the SAILOR team was ravaging the interior with abandon, shrugging off all attempts to take them out by the PMC and the youma units.

"Everyone, your attention please," Beryl called out to the people in the CIC. About fifty people were in there, mostly civilian employees that had only taken their jobs for the money.

"Well, as you probably have guessed, there's incoming forces coming to take out this CIC here. So I'm ordering the destruction of all databases and information pertaining to the Nakanishi Group. After that is done, you may escape and surrender to the forces outside."

"What about the healing solution formula?" someone asked.

"We'll take care of that," Kunzite replied. He looked at the terminal that was fingerprint access only next to the center of the CIC. It usually sat empty, due to its sensitive nature. But now, it was going to finally serve…

The lights in the CIC suddenly flickered, then went out. They came back on, due to the fact that Amy had missed the off the grid generator that was right next to the CIC.

Not that it helped.

All around the workstations, alarms and klaxons sounded off that the automated guns and missiles batteries were offline, the UAVs and UCAVs, offline, jamming capabilities, offline…everything.

"For fucks sake, why did the guns stop firing?!" Beryl yelled to the people in the CIC. "Somebody give me something!"

"Ma'am," the technician, Sorenson said, "Someone's got into our network and remotely shut down everything. UCAVs, UAVs, automated turrets…the youma are still up and running, but that's because they're able to work independent of the main servers."

"That means that they're…" an explosion from outside in the hallway announced the presence of intruders.

"Get down!" one of the security officers in the interior of the CIC screamed out to the rest of the CIC. Everyone hit the deck, including Beryl and Kunzite. Both of them drew out their sidearms, more as a symbol of defiance than of actual help to the battle outside.

"All civilians, get out using the rear entrance," the PMC commander, Soshkin, ordered. "We'll cover for you, but you're on your own after this." He drew his Gsh-18 service pistol, a holdover from his time in the Russian military, and chambered a round.

"They're attacking the other entrance, sir!" another of the guards, 2 Hotel 6 said to him. The platoon of guards in the room were handpicked from the best that they could get; Russian Naval Infantry, Alpha Group Commandos, Foreign Legion…but it wasn't going to be enough, and with the SAILOR team right outside the door, it was already too late.

"Then we'll just have to fight harder," he said. "Prepare to move!"

* * *

"Amy, the lights are still on in the CIC!" Serena bitched to Amy. As soon as they had rounded the corner, the lights came back on, lighting up the CIC. At least everything else was offline.

"They must have a generator in there or something!" Amy yelled back. She dropped to one knee and started firing at the soldiers pouring out of the doors to the CIC, but was quickly forced into cover by the rapid fire from several machine guns from the youma.

"Flashbang out!" Mina took one off of her vest and tossed it at the enemy. It detonated, illuminating the entire area with a dazzling light and deafening roar. Most of the soldiers however, were trained to ignore or to at least, know how to minimize the effects of a flashbang. The youma were of course, unaffected.

"Down, down!" Serena ordered. She could see at least two squads of the elite soldiers take up positions behind the youma, who were firing their machine guns rapidly at the approaching team. The SAILOR team was relatively exposed, finding cover only by destroying two of the most forward youma units and taking up positions behind them.

"Grenade, out!" Serena, following Mina's example, tossed a grenade at one of the youma. It exploded, destroying it.

"Maybe we should have thought this one out a little bit more," Mina grumbled, leaning out to fire a couple more shots at a youma before ducking back in, the rapid fire chatter of the enemy's P90s. Several of the other soldiers brought up HK21s and Pechenegs, laying down their own covering fire in addition to the youma's.

"Not the time, Mina!" Serena shot back, firing a magazine's worth of rounds at the enemy on full auto.

Amy leaned out again and saw an opportunity to advance forward. A small gap had opened up where the two squads of elite infantry were taking cover behind the youma. The youma had positioned themselves on both sides of the doors, allowing for optimal coverage of their front, with overlapping fields of fire. The problem was, they only had one machine gun on the left side, like the ones they had encountered at the tram station. Unlike the ones that had attacked them at the hanger, they were less armed, but with numbers on their side, it didn't really matter.

However, a design flaw was immediately apparent; in addition to being weak on the sides, they had to physically turn to aim their machine gun on the side. It made for easier design and manufacture, with less moving parts and ease of maintenance, but instead of having a turret to target any threats the whole body of the UGV had to move in line with the threat in order to hit it.

"Serena, I've got a plan," Amy said over the radio. "I'm going to make myself extremely visible to those youma."

"And how are you going to do that?" Serena yelled at her, firing another burst.

"You'll see."

Amy accessed the diagnostic program on her HUD, which would test all of the scanning functions that it was capable of (millimetric radar, infrared, X-Ray, etc), and set it to loop for about eight times. She briefly thought about calling it endless eight, but decided against that; frivolous naming was for when they weren't under fire.

"Okay, I'm going!" She set the program in motion, sending out all sorts of scans and electronics heavy activity that would attract the youma toward her position.

From where she was hiding, on the right side of the room, the youma had to turn their attention to her position, and bring their weapons to bear. Which meant that they were no longer facing Serena and Mina.

Amy cringed as at least ten machine guns bore down on her cover. The youma was obviously not meant to take that much damage, as the last few engagements had taught them, and she would be smoked if Mina and Serena didn't get a move on.

"Hey!" 2 Hotel 6, the guard who had been inside the CIC earlier, saw all the youma start to focus their attention on just one particular soldier, while the other two started to toss grenades, flashbangs and then fire accurately into them, taking them out one by one. "Focus your fire on those guys!"

"Why are the youma doing that?!" another one of the soldiers yelled out, having to change his position due to the youma turning about.

"I don't fucking know, just fire on those two troops over…" That was the last thing he said before Mina sniped him.

"He's down," Mina said, ejecting the spent magazine from her HK417 and replacing it with a new one.

In a matter of seconds, with the distraction provided by Amy, Mina and Serena had taken out the youma. That still left the elite squads of the PMC troopers, who were still protected behind the now destroyed youma.

* * *

"Beryl, Kunzite, prepare to move," Soshkin told the two of them. The sound of rapid gunfire outside both doors was not boding well for the PMC.

"Negative," Kunzite said to Soshkin. "We need to destroy this data on here." He pointed to the computer terminal next to them.

Soshkin pointed his weapon at the terminal, but Beryl slapped his hand down.

"You idiot, shooting the terminal does not mean that the data's been destroyed. It connects to another server room!"

"Fine. You've got a minute," Soshkin replied stoically. He went to go check on the status of the soldiers outside.

* * *

"We need to get past these guys!" Serena screamed out. "Mina, Amy, lay down covering fire while I move up!"

"Covering!" Amy and Mina lay down suppressive fire, which managed to keep at least some of the PMC soldiers down, while they in return, fired back with their machine guns.

"Shift fire right!" Serena ordered. As ordered, Amy and Mina angled their fire to the right, increasing the pressure on the PMC units on that side of the room.

Serena sprinted from where she was hiding, behind a destroyed youma with Mina, to Amy's position while they lay down covering fire. From the Amy's position, she spotted several soldiers adjusting their base of fire so that they could suppress Amy and Mina. They were preoccupied with getting their machine guns set up, which would only take a couple of seconds, but that was all the time she needed.

"Moving!" Amy and Mina quickly tossed some grenades in the direction of the soldiers, who at this point had wisened up to their attacks. Serena however, took a brief inventory of her vest; twelve magazines, three grenades and a flashbang. Better put it use then. As Mina and Amy tossed their grenades, she threw the last flashbang with them.

"Grenades!" The soldiers dived out of the way, and one of them picked it up and tried to toss it back in the general direction of Amy and Mina.

That was when Serena's last flashbang went off, briefly stunning the soldier. Again, they were trained to ignore (or were at least, used to), flashbangs but even the best soldier can be taken off guard if something unexpected happens. The flashbang detonated in the air, and as a reflex action, the soldier brought his hand up to his face. With the grenade still in it.

The results were not unexpected. The grenade exploded, vaporizing the top part of the soldier and sending deadly shrapnel everywhere. Two more soldiers went down, and the rest were scattered from trying to avoid the grenades raining down on them. By this time, Serena had moved from the front to the room, sprinted to the now destroyed youma by the entrance to the CIC, and had taken up cover on their right flank.

Exposed on their right, the PMC soldiers made easy picking. Elite or not, if you were flanked and caught off guard, the results could be devastating. Almost all the soldiers went down in a hail of well-aimed fired from her, Mina and Amy. Several soldiers tried to turn around and engage her, but when they did so, they exposed themselves to Mina and Amy, who picked them off with ease. One by one, the last of the soldiers were felled by their gunfire, and

"All targets down!" Serena yelled to the other two. "Move up and stack up!"

Amy and Mina ran toward the steel doors, going around the destroyed youma and lining up behind Serena.

"It's locked!" Serena cursed, pulling on the handles. "Amy, do something!"

Oh yes, me to the rescue. Again, Amy grumbled, wishing that she wasn't the tech person for this particular group. Amy wasted no time finding the security protocols for that specific door, but as she was about to unlock it, she saw that the security protocols were being deactivated, as if someone with the proper clearance had come along and unlocked it.

"Wait, someone's opening the door!" Amy yelled to Serena, looking up from her tablet computer.

Mina quickly switched to her shotgun that had gone mostly unused for this mission, but now in close quarters, it was going to come in handy.

* * *

Soshkin opened the door up to see if he could offer any assistance up, using a fingerprint scanner and ID card. Unfortunately, that was the last thing he ever saw, as Mina brought up her shotgun and blasted him away, a massive hole in his chest. Not even body armor would be able to stop a 12 gauge shell at that range.

Beryl saw Soshkin go down, and immediately pulled on Kunzite's arm to get him out of there.

"But I haven't destroyed…" Kunzite started to protest.

"No time!" Beryl replied, pulling him away and firing a couple of shots from her pistol that went wild.

"They're getting away!" Mina pointed to the two figures weaving in and out between the rows of computers and desks, trying to move toward the other entrance. All the civilians had cleared out, but inside, there still was a fire team of elite soldiers who moved up in front of them, ready to avenge their fallen brethren outside.

"Dammit!" The three of them took up positions in the CIC and pushed forward. Unlike the entrance, fighting in the actual room itself was proving to be more difficult, with places to pop up from unexpectedly and fire a couple of shots before retreating.

"Amy, get to that terminal!" Serena shouted over the chatter of gunfire. One of the soldiers was manhandling a Pecheneg machine gun, firing it from the hip indiscriminately. Several shots came close to hitting the terminal, but at least if it was destroyed, the link wouldn't be severed, only the visual input would be.

"Mina, take that machine gunner out!"

"On it!" While Amy was running toward the terminal near the center of the room, Mina rose up from cover and fired three shots from the shotgun. The first shot missed, hitting a stack of papers and continuing through a desk until it ended up in the floor. The second shot hit the machine gunner straight in the center of the chest. He staggered, but the adrenaline would keep him alive for thirty more seconds. He continued to fire, directing his machine gun on Amy, who was just a couple meters away from the terminal. The last shot that Mina fired clipped him again in the chest, and the damage was just too great. He fell down, dead.

Amy made it to the terminal, and started to access the data on it. In his haste, Kunzite was still logged on as the user, so no cracking was needed. It was not connected to the internet, and so all of the data had to be manually transferred to another computer or wirelessly set up in order for the data to be sent remotely.

"Keep those guys off of me!"

Serena fired her M4 CQB-Receiver rapidly, downing yet another soldier. She took cover behind a desk in front of Amy, making she was blocking the line of fire in case anyone wanted to get the drop on Amy.

Amy hooked up a CAT-6 cable to the Ethernet port in the back of the terminal to her Toughbook, and started to transfer all the important files on the secure server. The healing solution formula, secret bank accounts, lists of shell corporations, bribed officials, arms sales…all of it was transferred over from the servers, to the terminal, then to her computer, then finally to Luna.

"Luna, are you getting all of this?!" she asked frantically over the radio, ducking down as several rounds from a P-90 zipped by.

"I'm getting the upload!" Luna could hear the stress in Amy's voice, and figured that she'd better make sure that all of the information that they needed was being kept in a good location, safe from harm.

"Dr. Kobayashi."

There was a delay, from both the transmission and Kobayashi trying to find the radio he had put down earlier. It wasn't hard to find, due to it being quite large and mostly stationary. It sat on his desk, taking up room, but at least it made for a good paperweight. "Yes, Luna?"

"Can you go into the section of the hanger that I've partitioned off?" she asked him.  
He looked around the hanger that had been his home for the last couple of weeks. "The one with the tarp and fans set up all around it?"

"Yes, that one."

Dr. Kobayashi walked from his rather pathetic desk that also served as his examination table in the abandoned hanger on Yokota AFB, and walked to a part of the hanger that Luna had recently taken over in the time that she was conducting the SAILOR team's operations overseas.

"Yes, I'm in the section you've cordoned off."

"Is everything plugged in?"

Kobayashi looked around the makeshift room. There were several fans blowing, even though it was the middle of the winter and the hanger was freezing. Several banks of computers of all types had been set up, temporarily turned into servers for the transfer and storage of data. Kobayashi walked around, making sure that everything was plugged in, all lights were green, nothing was smoking or spitting out sparks. There was nothing of the sort. He walked back to the desk.

"Everything seems to be in order," Kobayashi said over the radio.

"Thanks," she said.

"How are things…" he started to ask, but Luna cut him off.

"It's going. That's all I can really say for the moment."

"Okay, I'll let you get back to…" Luna terminated the conversation, not out of rudeness, but she really needed to get back to helping out the SAILOR team. She reached for another chocolate bar, opened it and took a large bite, hoping that it would be enough to get her by for at least another hour.

* * *

It wasn't going well for Lita or Raye.

"Civilians in the line of fire!" Lita said, watching several civilians run past, ducking from their bullets flying overhead. Out of the corner of her eye, Lita saw Raye ready her MGL, aiming down the corridor and toward the group of youma and soldiers.

"Don't use the grenade launcher!" Lita snapped at her. "You might hit some civilians!"

"So what?!" Raye glared at her.

"So, just don't use it!"

Fuming, Raye put the MGL away, and started firing with her M16A4, taking out several PMC soldiers and youma, but more just took their place as they repositioned to fend off the flanking attack.

"You see that machine gunner?" Raye pointed to a man setting up an HK21 next to a destroyed youma.

"Yeah, I'm on him!" Lita laid a couple of bursts at his position, hitting the man and killing him. It was at that time Lita and Raye saw Beryl and Kunzite make a dash from the entrance, running down a hallway to get away from them.

"They're escaping out the back entrance!" Lita reported to Serena. She fired a long burst at them, but several youma rolled into her line of fire. She destroyed them, but their shattered husks blocked her from getting a shot off at them.

"Lita, Raye, get them!" Serena screeched over the radio, seeing them flee from the battle.

"We can't!" Lita shouted back, ducking from some errant shots from a youma. "There's too many youma here for us to take them out!"

"Goddammit!" Serena screamed, smashing her hand down on a computer monitor. The last of the fire team had been wiped out in a matter of seconds, but they had bought enough time for Beryl and Kunzite to escape.

Amy had just finished transferring what she could to Luna, and started in on their communications. That backdoor was still coming in handy.

"Wait, I'm getting something!" She waved to Serena, who was checking out a dead PMC soldier.

"Kunzite, meet me in my quarters, we'll finish this." Beryl's voice penetrated their headsets, sending a shiver up their spines.

"Hot damn," Serena said, taking the information in. "We'll get them there."

Mina looked at Amy and the seeming labyrinth of wires that had appeared when Amy had been working on that terminal. "Amy, is that data secure?" she asked.

Amy nodded back. "Yes. I've sent the important stuff to Luna."

"Did you get that?" Serena asked Luna.

"Affirmative, SAILOR Moon," Luna replied, still using their callsigns that they had dropped inadvertently. No one really much cared to be called by them anymore, but old habits tended to die very hard.

"The data has been transferred to our servers," (read, those rickity old ones in the hanger), "and I'll have someone start looking at them right away."

"Very good." Serena turned to Amy and Mina. "Let's get these bastards. Then we can go home."

"Uh…we could use some help here!" Lita's voice brought them back to the reality at hand.

"We're coming!" Serena said. "Let's go!"

Lita and Raye saw Serena, Mina and Amy come out of the CIC, guns blazing. The PMC soldiers were taken off guard by them, even though they had seen a bunch of people come flying out of there, obviously running away from something. Encouraged, the two of them picked themselves up from their cover and advanced forward.

"Get them! Get them!" Raye yelled out, switching to her Masterkey on her M16A4, firing it from the hip at a surviving youma. The youma was hit by slug after slug, until Raye ran out and switched back to the M16, firing two bursts as the machine sputtered to a halt.

"They're running!" Mina pointed. The surviving PMC soldiers scrambled down the hallways and away from the fight, beaten. There was no point in killing them; they would get what was coming to them anyway once the Marines outside dealt with them.

"Okay, now we can go get Beryl," Serena said, ejecting her spent magazine and putting a new one in.

* * *

"Madame President," SecDef said to POTUS. The last couple of hours had been hell for everyone in that underground bunker in the White House. "We're getting reports that the base is starting to shut down from all of our units there."

"Thank god." POTUS sat back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. What Amy had said to her was true then. They had finally beaten down the Nakanishi Group.

* * *

"Sir, the UCAVs and UAVs are finally offline." An staff officer brought the information to COMUSNAVCENT, who was sitting in a chair almost dumbstruck at what had just transpired in the last couple of hours or so. Two companies of Marines, gone, ten ships, gone, half of their air cover, gone…but now it seemed that things were finally coming under control. It really did seem like that the battle was turning in their favor, finally.

"Send in the rest of the Marines there and take over for the first wave."

The officer was about to protest, but COMUSNAVCENT was not going to have it today. "Send them in, Commander."

"Yes sir."

Two more companies were on the ground, taking over from the destroyed Marine companies that had been unceremoniously wiped out by the massive guns on the high ground. They warily crept forward, past their dead comrades, and took up defensive positions around their assigned operating areas.

More marines, this time from the HMS Ocean joined up on the western side of the island. Despite having a capacity for over 800 Royal Marines, there was half of that component when the Ocean had been deployed to the Gulf of Aden. While the Royal Marines had been spared the fate of the their American counterparts, they were still coming under heavy fire and sustaining casualties from the UGVs on the island.

"Hey, will someone tell the Brits that they're important on our flank," COMUSNAVCENT said to no one in particular in the CIC. One of the staff officers finally got around to doing it, and it was a half-hearted effort at best.

"I understand that, Admiral," the force commander, a burly Colonel with a trimmed mustache, groaned, knowing that the Americans wanted at least some of the glory. "We'll keep a lookout for any surprises," he said. The Colonel put down the receiver and reached for his cup of tea. He wished he could have a couple shots of whisky, but that would more than likely impair his judgment, which he desperately needed today. The whisky could wait until they actually won something today.

"Brigadier, when are we sending in the SAS?" he said to the high ranking person across from him in their CIC. Not as fancy as the Americans' and their massive super carriers, but it got the job done.  
"When the time is right," the Brigadier sighed to him, taking a sip of tea. The nametag said "Lethbridge-Stewart", and he had been at this business for a very long time. "Until then, we wait from orders from the PM. He wants to get this situation under control without risking too many lives."

"Bloody command. Wish they'd get their heads out of their arse."


	73. Chapter LXXI: Thus, always to Tyrants

**Chapter LXXI: Thus, always to Tyrants.**

**1230hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Sic Semper Tyrannis!" Marcus Junius Brutus and John Wilkes Booth_

_"The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish." Charlie Chaplain, The Great Dictator._

* * *

The SAILOR took a quick breather, reloading their weapons and checking that they didn't have any additional holes in their bodies.

"Hey, I've been hit," Raye said, looking at a gash on her right arm. Apparently, she had been grazed by a bullet, but the adrenaline kept her from feeling any pain. Amy went over to her and examined the wound; it didn't look too bad. She got a small tube of the healing solution and applied it to the wound, and within a couple of seconds, it was healed up.

"Just like new," Raye said, rotating her arm back and forth, before realizing that Lita was glaring at her. Apparently, being reminded that not having one of those limbs was a major faux pas.

"Let's get going guys," Serena said to them, seeing that they were all ready to go.

"Luna, walk me toward Beryl's quarters," Serena said over her radio.

"It's 100 meters forward, a security station, then on the right another ten meters, with the room on the right."

"Sounds simple enough. Keep going right then."

"That's affirmative."

The SAILOR team sprinted the 100 meters in no time, which would have made any 2012 Olympians beam with pride if they had that sort of performance. They rounded a corner, and ran straight into more hostiles.

"Contact, enemy youma, to the front!" Raye pointed straight in front of them. Two youma were by the guard station, their machine guns all ready to go. They opened up the instant they saw the SAILOR team advancing down the corridor, while the guards behind them half-heartily got ready to engage them. Lita and Raye, the ever consummate pointmen, dove into the prone position and opened up with their weapons, M16A4 and M249s chattering away at the two UGVs. The hail of bullets quickly disabled the youma, but two more took their place.

"Raye, use the launcher!" Serena yelled out, sending a burst of fire down the hall.

Raye got out the grenade launcher and took aim down the hallway. Breathing in and out, she depressed the trigger twice, sending the 40mm grenades downrange. They exploded, taking out the youma and adding to the general carnage there.

Lita tossed a grenade of her own into the security post, which exploded inside. Several more guards were taken out that way.

"Fall back! Fall back!" Lita heard the guards cry out to each other. Even with all the money in the world, people had their limits. And after besting most of the PMC, these guys weren't going to stick around to be killed. They abandoned the post and went scurrying down a side hall, never to be seen again.

"Don't pursue them," Serena ordered. "Amy, where's Beryl's room?"

Amy put it up on their HUDs. "It's the one on the right here."

It wasn't hard to miss. A large wooden door marked with the logo of the Nakanishi Group (a simple N and G crossed over each other), stuck out amongst the bland steel doors that they had fought their way through all throughout the fortress.

* * *

Beryl heard the gunfire outside her door and realized that the end was near. Quickly, she used the webcamera on her computer sitting on her desk to make one last call. It took a second, but it went through.

"Who…you…" POTUS snarled at her.

"Yes me." A couple of more gunshots sounded off, closer this time.

President Hamilton leaned in closer to the camera. "You're finished, you bitch. Rot in hell."

Beryl just smiled at her. "Perhaps not. I suggest that you take a look at that email…"

"I am not going to listen to a coward like you. Have a nice death." The conversation was terminated by POTUS.

* * *

"How the fuck does she keep contacting me?!" The President shouted out to the roomful of collected advisors. Even at the end, that infernal woman kept taunting her.

"Maybe we haven't gotten all of that Nakanishi software…" SecDef suggested to her.

"Bah…" She threw up her hands and got back to watching the battle, or what was left of it, seeing that the Nakanishi PMC was collapsing. But those UGVs were still giving the Marines and special operations forces trouble, as the calls for more air strikes and fire missions went out over the radiowaves.

* * *

The SAILOR team opened the doors up to Beryl's room. Lita went in first, her shotgun at the ready. Behind her, Raye, Serena, Amy with her PDW, and Mina with her shotgun, the HK417 slung over her shoulder.

Beryl and Kunzite turned to face their former-pawns, the people they had manipulated for so long to do their bidding.

"Glad to see you could make it, SAILOR team," Beryl said, smiling at the five weapons trained on them.

"Or SAILOR Scouts," Kunzite grumpily pointed out.

"Okay, that's kind of a stupid name," Serena snarled. She didn't remember anyone calling her, or the team a name like that before. SAILOR in general, was a very stupid name to begin with, and whoever came up the acronym just wanted to have a nice word spelled out. Real smooth.

"Just a little something Nephrite kept naming you by," Beryl replied to her, continuing to smile. "It was one of the last things I ever heard from him."

"And you three…" Kunzite pointed at Serena, Lita and Raye, keeping his pistol at his side. It would be a futile gesture to try to raise it up and shoot at them. "I saw you on the news cameras. I saw you gun down my love. I saw you riddle him with bullets to make sure that he was dead." The quiet rage in his voice was almost akin to shouting at the top of his lungs. Everyone in the room could tell that he was upset over the death of Zoicite, and that made him all the more dangerous at this particular moment. Even without a weapon, he could have something, anything up his sleeve.

"I'm sure you have a lot of questions before you execute us," Beryl said quite smugly.

Serena made a motion with her M4 CQB Receiver to put the guns down. "First off, weapons on the ground," Serena ordered. Beryl and Kunzite both put down their pistols; Serena noted that Kunzite's weapon was a silver-plated PPK, much like the James Bond weapon.

"Second off…why?"

Beryl cocked her head at her. "Why…?"

"Yeah Beryl, why? Why us? Why all of this? Why kill so many innocent people?" Serena spat every word at her like it was a bullet, riddling Beryl with every subject, noun and adjective in the sentence.  
Beryl kept her cool. "I did this for the benefit of Japan, Ms. Tsukino. If you and your friends there weren't so short sighted, then maybe you wouldn't have tossed away Japan's only chance to stay relevant on the modern scene."

"So that gives you the right to become a terrorist?" Amy jumped into the interrogation. "Blow up innocent schoolgirls in the streets and turn them into killing machines? Does that give you the right to kill people who get in your way of corporate profit? Does that make you a good person? A hero to Japan?" Amy winced at that last question. She should have said something else, but Beryl would just twist around that answer and…

"A good person? Hero to Japan? What do you think I've been doing all this time? Do you think I wanted all of this?"

Yeah, should have kept my mouth shut, Amy grumbled to herself. Now Beryl was going to go on for a little bit, justifying her actions. It didn't matter that if they killed her right then and there, she would still get the last word, gloat, and then die. She had nothing to lose.

"Do you think I wanted the Nakanishi Group destroyed? Like this?" Beryl gestured at her office, but was probably trying to reference the island as a whole.

"I don't see how…" Amy began, but Beryl cut her off.

"Ms. Mizuno," Beryl snapped at her. "At least give me the decency to finish my sentence."

Amy glared at her, while Mina's trigger finger tightened slightly. A little bit more pull, and Beryl would be…

"Don't," Serena said, looking over at where Mina was standing. "Not yet anyway."

"Yes, that's right," Beryl continued, smirking at all of them.

"What did you hope to gain through all of this?" Lita asked her, narrowing her eyes at the two people in front of her. She felt a slight pain in her (phantom) arm, reminding her of what had happened a scant six months ago. And it was all because of this woman.

Kunzite, who had been mostly silent since the SAILOR team burst into their office, spoke now.

"It may seem trite and overused, but we wished to secure Japan's future."

"Yeah yeah, we know. Japan is dying," Mina mocked. "We got that speech from the Prime Minister, your toady."

"Well, then you know all about the why of the matter," Kunzite replied, ignoring the mocking tone of Mina. "We just decided to do something about it."

"Which leads us back to the extreme decisions that led us to today," Mina then said. "When did you come up with the idea of the SAILOR program?"

"Some five or six years ago," Beryl replied. Her eyes flickered for a second, as if remembering a nostalgic memory, of good times, days gone past. "I had just tossed out some idiot for coming up for completely fucking up one of these secret projects that he just couldn't keep secret. There's a reason why only a few people know about these things."

"I'm sure of that," Amy said, icily. "And what about the medical staff? The microchips? The prosthetic limbs?"

"Well, yes, you were the test subjects," Beryl said, looking at the five of them. "If nothing else, you can at least take comfort in knowing that the data collected will help other people. Dr. Kobayashi had some theories at least, and he put them to work in you. It wasn't hard to find good, trained medical personnel, with the recession and all. We simply put out a want ad, and we were overflowing in qualified people within hours." She glanced at Kunzite. "Kunzite, how many applications did we get for the medical personnel? For thirty spots I believe."

He racked his brain for the information. "Four thousand applications for thirty spots."

"Yes, do you see how easy it was? Give people a purpose, and they'll follow you forever," Beryl replied.  
"All of this, of course, was at price," she added, frowning. "We had to spend a lot of money on you five, along with salaries, junkets, weapons, security contracting…it really was a shame that we contracted out to another security company, it would have made our life a lot easier when we moved on the medical facility two weeks ago."

"And the healing solution?" Serena asked, fiddling with the safety catch on her weapon, in complete violation of weapons safety. She was starting to get extremely bored of Beryl and Kunzite justifying themselves at every question they asked.

"That was developed by the government, nominally. But since we had many contracts with them, it basically belonged to us. All they had to do was sign some paper giving the order to mass produce it."

"And hike up the price to an extravagant level," Amy said. Her mom could have certainly saved so many more lives as a doctor using that healing solution to operate on wounds that would have normally killed the person or left them scarred for life. "Looking to make a quick buck on people's misery?" Amy said to her, glaringly. "It wouldn't be the first time."  
Beryl shook her head at that. "Please. The pharmaceutical companies would be suing us out of business so fast…well, certainly faster than you did, that's for sure."

"Oh, that's extremely funny," Lita snarled at her. "I'm sure that went into your planning process when you also decided to contact that…that…" She was temporarily at a loss for words, trying to come up with a name. "What was his name again?" she whispered to Mina.

"Chong…Zhung…something like that."

"Yeah, that Zhung guy. Going around, blowing up schoolgirls to become assassins for a megacorp. How much did you pay that guy anyway?"

Beryl shook her head. "I don't know. Wasn't very much, that's for sure."

"Who's idea was it to use underaged teenage girls for assassins?" Lita asked again. She was on a roll. Might as well keep pushing it as far as she could. It was getting pretty ridiculous at this point anyway, so might as well just keep asking the stupid questions.

"Lita, by this time, I think you would have figured it out, it was me," Beryl said, exasperated. "Really now, I just put the data together, and that was what it told me. And I quote…" Beryl had that entire report memorized; the one that had been sent to the PM to get the ball rolling on the SAILOR team. "Certain individuals will be selected from the general Japanese populace between the ages of 14-18 (and not from the JSDF) to carry out operations. The reasoning behind the age group selection is the flexibility of learning, the rate of learning, the continued growth of the body post-puberty, and the potential of said persons to become leaders in the society of future Japan. Unquote."

Amy remembered reading that in one of the many reports that had been given to them when the PM begged them for their help. What utter nonsense it was, and that still held true now. Underaged girls, nice. That certainly violated practically every law on the book in Japan and on the international scene. Of course, I didn't really know about that until they implanted me with microchips in my brain, Amy bitterly cursed to herself.

"Japan is known for employing underaged teens to pilot mecha or become assassins," Beryl said, without a trace of irony. "Neon Genesis Evangelion, for example. I preferred Rahxephon, but no matter."

"That's only in fiction," Raye pointed out. Really, was. How stupid was that to compare fictional works of art to their situation? That was beyond insulting, Raye thought.

Beryl shrugged off Raye's comment. "Says you." She continued to stare down them, examining them individually.

"I saw you in there, the medical facility at one time," she commented, deciding to pick at her nails. They were painted red. How appropriate for this situation. She didn't remember painting them this morning, but then again, it had been a long day after all.

All of the girls looked at Beryl strangely.

"What do you mean by that?" Mina asked her. They were certainly getting their questions answered, and then some. Not that it helped Serena and her impatientness to remove Beryl from this world.

"Exactly what it says," she tossed back the phrase to Mina. "Came by the observation room where that stupid nurse was snooping around in my operations. Showed her."

"Nurse Kuroi?"

"Yes, that's the one. Anyway, you looked quite like normal girls back then. Now look at you!"

Everyone's eyes flickered back and forth, even Kunzite, who gave a quick look over of the SAILOR team. They were a mess, their eyes with heavy black circles around them. Mina and Serena's hair had been mussed, and had been put up in a tight bun that didn't exactly suit them. Raye and Lita had blank stares on their faces, trying to block out everything that had happened to them in the past six months, and were trying desperately to keep it together. Amy had an impassive look on her face, stoically hiding whatever feelings she had gathered over the last couple of weeks. It was a brave effort on all their parts.

"You know, that's great and all," Serena said to her, "But the fact remains. You ruined our lives. You ruined Japan. Hell, you would have ruined the entire would if we hadn't stopped you today. And that's why we decided to come here and to take care of you. You're our problem."

"'Our problem?'" Beryl smiled. "Really now?"

"Yes, Beryl," Amy shot back. "Our problem. We're just cleaning house from the people who dirtied it. And when we get back to Japan, we're going to set everything straight. So there you have it."

Serena had about had it with the conversation. She looked at the rest of the team, who silently agreed with her. It was time to end all of this.

"Well, enough chit-chat. In the name of counter-terrorism, I'll punish you!"

Everyone in the room stopped and stared at Serena, incredulous that she would say something that stupid in the middle of something as serious as this.

"What…?" Amy asked, giving her a very confused look.

"Never again," Raye said, shaking her head.

"It was something I came up when I was looking in the mirror on the ship," Serena quickly said to them, embarrassed that she actually said it. "It sounded much better in my head…"

"I haven't heard of that one before," Beryl said, puzzled at that choice of words. The SAILOR team sure had their quirks.

Serena switched to a more succinct way of putting the situation to Beryl. "We're going to…uh…fuck your face!"

"Now that I have heard before," she said, smiling at her executioners. "But before you kill me, permit me to show you one last thing."

"And what would that be?" Serena snarled at her.

"You'll see." She pulled out a clicker, one of those things you advance powerpoint slides with. The entire SAILOR flinched as she pulled it.

"Beryl, drop it!" Lita screamed. She readied her weapon, just in case.

"It's just a powerpoint clicker," she reassured. It wasn't having the desired effect on them.

"Last warning, Beryl!" Amy yelled, although it still seemed like her version of "yelling" was talking very loudly.

Beryl gave one last smile, knowing where this route was taking them. "Relax, SAILOR team, it's just something that we recorded earlier today, that's all."

She pressed the "play" button.

"No!" Mina was the first to fire. Her shotgun slug flew out of the barrel and tunneled its way into Beryl's face. In an instant, the striking beauty of the perfectly sculpted and maintained face was disintegrated into a mass of exploded tissue and bone. There was no face anymore, or a head for that matter. The slug continued through the head, smashing the brain, pulpifying it into oblivion. The time that it had served its master had just now come to an end, all the hopes, dreams, and ambitions that Beryl held, now lost forever when Mina's slug tunneled its way through her face. Some might say that it was one of the worst tragedies, losing a great mind like that, but those were few and far between, extremist free-market advocates who completely missed the point when it came to Beryl's policies and decisions. In quick succession, Amy and Lita fired their weapons, riddling Beryl's tailored pinstripe slacks and matching suit, obliterating the material that the tailor at Harrod's had spent hours working on, making sure that the suit was perfectly suited to Beryl's stunning figure. The pink matter splayed all over the wall as she fell backward, headless, matched with the blossoming blood patterns that emanated from her body from the extra bullets being fired.

Kunzite was next, his body twitching from the multitude of rounds that Raye and Serena were pumping into him at the moment. Obviously, Raye was not using the grenade launcher at this close of a distance, so her Masterkey would have to do. She pumped round after round into Kunzite, but unlike Mina, she missed the head, instead blasting shotgun shells into him at close range. Serena flipped to full auto on her M4 CQB-Receiver, and depressed the trigger. The entire magazine was emptied in a matter of seconds. Both of them slumped against the wall, their blood staining it.

It took a minute for the SAILOR team to figure out something was playing on the wall behind the bodies.


	74. Chapter LXXII: Deals with Devils,Part II

**Chapter LXXII: Deals with Devils, Part II.**

**0400hrs, 26 December 2013, Colorado Springs, Colorado.**

_"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint." Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France._

* * *

The President finally got around to looking at the email that had been sent to her by that idiot, Jadeite, since Beryl seemed to think that it was a work of art that she should see it herself.

After a couple of hours watching the battle rage at Socotra, she really needed to get some more work done. Inside of it, she found several news reports detailing the massacre of a small, South Sudanese village by rebels. That was a common occurrence, and POTUS didn't see the relevance to the SAILOR team. But then she saw the mission reports. Suddenly, the pieces started to come together. While she knew that the SAILOR team was not responsible in the grand scheme of things for that massacre, at the tactical level, they were just as guilty as the people who committed genocide in Rwanda, in Darfur, in the Congo.

Amy and Mina knew something was wrong, but did nothing much else other than yelling at the rest of the team to cut it out. That wasn't going to cut it in the eyes of the media. She continued to read the email, the mission reports, the psychological evaluations…all of it. Several film stills were provided, showing the charred bodies of the people that had been trapped in the church…she could make out several small burned forms, children more than likely. She closed the pictures, trying not to let the sad image burn in her mind for too long.

If the public knew that the President knowingly worked with genociders, then all her credibility would go out the window. This was the situation she found herself in. Jadeite had altered their HUDs to give false readings, and despite knowing that something was wrong, they went ahead and committed an act of genocide, wiping a hundred innocent lives. And that was the kicker; Jadeite and the Nakanishi Group made no effort to hide their involvement in this particular operation, with the email itself coming from a Chief Operating Officer. It was the conflict of narrative that would occur after the SAILOR team went public with their existence after they finished off Beryl.

With those evil people out of the way, they would be next; and the President and other world leaders that knew about this team would be pulled down in the fallout. The SAILOR team might even get off the hook actually, saying that they were forced, blah blah blah. But the leaders…no, the leaders would bear the shame of that particular day. The media…the public…all of them would hang them out to dry, criticize them to hell and back for doing such a thing…even though the SAILOR had been almost singlehandedly taking down their corporate masters. That was something that she could not allow. She had worked too fucking hard for this post, gotten shot at, saw the dedicated staff that had supported her shot down and murdered by that infernal corporation, put in hundreds of hours trying to get them back, only for them to fire one last parting shot that would effectively put all of her hard work to naught. That, she could not let happen. That team down there knew that they were in some way, expendable. They knew the risks…right? She kept telling herself that, as if it meant anything.

POTUS picked up the phone in her office and called the COS.

"Jorge, get me the usual group. Yes, the Indian, UK and Japanese PMs. Thanks."

Ten minutes later (a record for getting some many world leaders in a conference call on short notice), she had her usual mishmash group of leaders gathered together.

"Thank you gentlemen for taking this call on short notice," she said very politely. "I understand that we're all under a lot of stress here, with the ongoing battle."

"I have heard from my ships near Socotra that the battle is going not as planned," the UK PM said disappointed. "I was assured that the battle would be swift and decisive, and yet it's turning into a stalemate."

"I understand your concern, Sir Robinson," the President said to him, trying to allay his concerns. She changed gear quickly, steering the other members to her line of thinking.

"Gentlemen, while the battle is raging on, that is not the real purpose of this meeting here."

The Indian PM looked at her funny. "What do mean, Madame President?"

"I have recently come across some information about this SAILOR team that has been working with me and Mr. Hasegawa in taking down the Nakanishi Group."

The Japanese PM sat up in his chair, wondering what fortune had come across his way after all this time.

"This SAILOR team was…was involved in an incident in South Sudan sometime in November. Over one-hundred innocent men, women and children were killed in a remote village in the state of Unity."

She put some of the pictures that had come up with the email.

"We've all seen the pictures, Madame President," the PM of India said to her. "I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here."

"These were taken by the SAILOR team," she said to them. The leaders still looked a little bit confused.

"So?" the Indian Prime Minister asked. "What about it?"

"They were involved in this operation." The President made sure that they heard every word clearly, making her point known. "They were the ones who perpetrated the massacre, whether they were misled or did it on purpose."

"Madame President, why would this special operations team do such a thing?" The Japanese PM finally grew a pair and started asking questions.

"The better question is, why did YOU send them there?" PM Pannikar said threatening. "It is my understanding that this team was under your control."

"While Mr. Hasegawa was in nominal control of this team, as we all know, the Nakanishi Group was pulling most of the strings behind this operation. One of their COOs modified their HUDs to target all of the civilians in the area, and they followed through, killing all the villagers."

"I still don't understand how this involves me," PM Robinson said, confusingly.

POTUS tried to sway the PM to her point of view. "The SAILOR team was going public with their existence after they completed their operations in Socotra."

"Wait, they're in Socotra?" That got PM Robinson's attention. "I was not informed of this."

"That's because Mr. Hasegawa and I allowed them to go there and to take out Beryl and Mr. Kunzite, the remaining COO."

"Madame President, with all due respect, are you out of your bleeding mind?" That outburst from PM Robinson was very uncharacteristic. "What haven't you told us?"

Well, better break the news now, POTUS thought to herself.

"I was personally contacted by Beryl herself, the person defacto in charge of the Nakanishi Group. She still has five more nuclear weapons on the island. She asked me to inform the world, which I did not."

That did not sit well with the other leaders there.

"AND WHY WAS THIS INFORMATION NOT SHARED WITH US!" The Indian PM was livid; after all he'd done, allowing this SAILOR unit to come into his country, after allowing some Indian ships to go into harm's way at Socotra, after allowing a huge military buildup near India…this was the thanks he got?

"Mr. Pannikar, the nuclear weapons have been disabled and disposed of," POTUS calmly said to the obviously very upset world leaders.

"Oh thank god," was the response of practically everyone there.

"But why didn't you tell us?" PM Robinson angrily said. "That stunt could have cost millions of lives."

"Precisely that. If I told you all beforehand, you would have all backed out, and Beryl would have gotten more time to plan, to make us bend to her will, and to accede to whatever she wanted in due time. Now was the time to strike, and that threat has been taken care of."

"By the SAILOR team," Hasegawa added, eager to get back on topic. The nuclear weapons did not so much worry him as much as getting that black stain off his proverbial white suit, per se.

"Yes, Mr. Hasegawa, I was getting to that," POTUS said to him, aggravated that he was interrupting her train of thought. "Gentleman, despite what this SAILOR team has done for us, they are political liability that will more than certainly affect not only my office and Mr. Hasegawa's, but both of yours, and even beyond that."

"I still fail to understand how this affects me," Robinson said back, not happy the way things were going here.

"Sir Robinson, if we go down, we all go down in some regards," POTUS sternly said back to him. "More missing nuclear weapons, secret special operations groups running around, murdering innocent civilians, and we've been covering up in some way, shape, or form, the actions of this group."

This was the problem with dealing with allies sometimes; they had their own agendas and missions, and if something went squirrely, then it would also affect them as well. Goddammit.

"Madame President…" PM Robinson was still skeptical of POTUS' intention, but he had gotten himself dragged into this stupid situation, and maybe he could use it for some leverage later down the road. His popularity was at an all-time high after his brush with death; the normally scathing British press was praising his conduct, calling him one of more "ballsy" PMs that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That was something that was almost unprecedented, but in due time, his popularity would fade and he would be just another Tory PM, posh and all that. At least with some favors overseas, he could cushion the blow that would eventually befall him. "…fine. Fine, I will go along with whatever you've got planned. I trust your guidance in this issue."

"Mr. Pannikar," POTUS said to Indian PM. "I am truly sorry for not telling you about this earlier. However, as a token of my appreciation, I have requested that the extradition process be sped up so that you may have justice for…that, uh…Bhopal. Thing." She still didn't really understand the entire situation behind that, but it wasn't her problem right now. Whatever the aspects of that situation, it seemed to relax Pannikar for now. "Thank you, Madame President," he said, relieved that a very bad chapter in Indian history was finally coming to a close. And he would be the one to put an end to it.

"Mr. Hasegawa," POTUS said to the Japanese PM.

"Hmm?" The Japanese PM even had the balls to look somewhat smug, underneath that stoical Japanese face of his.

"You haven't won any more favors from me," she sternly added. "In fact, you are greater in debt to me than ever before. Here I am, cleaning up your mess, with the SAILOR team."

That wiped the smug look off of his face. "Of…of course," he stammered back.

POTUS sat back in her chair, and took in the information and consequently, the decisions she would make off it.

"I have come to a final decision, after all of the information that we have covered today."


	75. Chapter LXXIII: We do not need you

**Chapter LXXIII: We do not need you.**

**0500hrs, 26 December 2013, Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States.**

"Gentlemen, I think it's time that we let the SAILOR team go."

The entire impromptu council nodded their heads in agreement. The call was terminated shortly thereafter.


	76. Chapter LXXIV: Order 66

**Chapter LXXIV: Order 66**

**1255hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Who decides my value? Tigers and leopards are in our hearts too, because they don't that the beasts are lurking, they stick a cheap price on me and let me go." Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Kuusou Rumba_

* * *

The F-15Cs guarding the P-3 Orion got an order to shoot it down. They didn't like it as much as the next guy, but orders were orders. One of them lined up behind them, and fired two Sidewinders. It detonated right behind the lumbering plane, shattering the engines and the wings, riddling the fuselage with deadly shrapnel.

Luna and Artemis never knew who betrayed them to their fates. The debris of the Orion lazily fell toward the sea, to rest forever.

"Damn," one of the pilots said. "I wonder why we had to shoot them down."

"Must have been some leftover Nakanishi software," the other pilot said, convincing himself that he had not been in the wrong. The F-15Cs RTBed, and within a couple of hours, they were back at base in bed, after swapping sorties with their fellow pilots and somberly remembering the ones who had been lost that day.

* * *

At Yokota Air Base, things were moving less violently. The Security Forces moved in a took Dr. Kobayashi, Dr. Iwasaki, Nurse Kuroi, and the rest of the medical staff in for "protection." The Medical Facility's security detail was sent back home, having being told that their mission was accomplished, and that they would be no longer needed. Most of them found a job later…with the private sector.

"Um, excuse me," Dr. Kobayashi asked one of the SFs escorting him away to a C-17 waiting on the tarmac. "Where are we going?"

"I'm sorry Dr. Kobayashi, that's classified," was the stoic response. "However, the Japanese government has allowed you make a phone call once you reach the United States." The slip of the tongue was very deliberate.

"Wait, the United States? Why?" Kobayashi said to the SF officer.

"I'm sorry sir, that's classified. Like I said before…"

Kobayashi gave up after that conversation, and resigned himself to whatever was going to happen to him.

Within an hour, the medical staff was being flown to the United States. The security forces also took into possession several servers (rather, the computers that stood in for servers) that held important information in regards to the Nakanishi Group. These would also be taken to the United States for analysis.

* * *

Clerk Yumiko Takahashi was working a late night at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, specifically Office Complex Number 5, in Kasumigaseki, Tokyo. Terrorist attacks or not, the work of the government was never finished, and during the attacks, some social security information had gotten lost. It was her job to find it, and with twenty years' worth of experience under her belt, she was going to have to use every single one of them to fix this problem. As she was toiling away at her desk, she noticed several men coming through the office, passing the rows and rows of desks that lined the place.

Auditors? She thought to herself. It would be like them to come at an hour like this.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" she called out. They stopped for a second, then came over to her.

"Yes, you can actually." One of them flipped out a Tokyo Metropolitan Police badge. "We need you to pull up these five names, please." He pulled out a piece of paper, with the names written on it. Yumiko noted that it came from the Prime Minister's office.

"Uh…okay. Of course." If the police came by, then they meant business. Better not question them, especially if they were on orders from the PM's office. She searched in her computer for them, and within seconds, she had the names pulled up.

"You know, you could have just called me, and I would have given you this information," she said to them, showing the results of the search.

The officer stared at her blankly. "Well, we just wanted to make sure."

"Make sure of what?" Yumiko asked, suspiciously.

"We want you to erase the information here," the officer said, giving her another piece of paper.

She examined the note again. "On all of them? They're dead though, no need to…"

"I said, please delete this information here," the officer repeated, pointing at the piece of paper. "Or would you rather we call your husband about your after-work escapades with your boss, Mr. Yamaoka?"

That made Yumiko's heart stop. These guys were really serious then.

"Alright, alright. I'm doing what you ask, just…just leave me alone."

Yumiko proceeded to wipe out every trace of information that the officers asked her to get rid of. All across Japan, at different departments, officers had been dispatched, whether from the JSDF or the police, and requested that data from that department be deleted. Sometimes, it wasn't even that. An innocuous email from a boss or chief would set the ball rolling for data removal.

Serena Tsukino, Raye Hino, Lita Kino, Amy Mizuno, and Mina Aino ceased to exist.

* * *

"Alpha 2-5, this is Overlord, come in, over."

Several groups of Special Operations Forces from SOCOM were already landing on the island, making their way through the destroyed first wave of marines, and past the second wave that had landed in the lull after the firing had stopped, sent in by a nervous COMUSNAVCENT.

"Yeah, we're here Overlord," Alpha 2-5 replied.

"Orders from above, Alpha 2-5. Standby."

"About time," Alpha 2-5 leader said. He was a Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land), operative, and he was ready to go. The four man element that he lead was an exceptional group of warriors that had the training, technology and experience to eliminate any threat. While he himself had not been at the killing of Osama bin Laden, Alpha 2-5 had certainly wished he had. This however, was more than going to make up for that.

"Poor bastards," one of his element, "Davies", said to one of the dead marines nearby him. The remains of the village was smoldering now, after the bombardment from the final, danger close fire mission that the forward observer had called in before he was killed in a hail of 57mm shells. They didn't find his body until a week later, and what was left could only be identified by DNA samples.

"They knew the risks," "Pompey," the demo expert on the element, stoically commented. "Although they certainly didn't deserve this."

"Huh," "Gallant," said. He looked at one of the dead marines; his name tag said "Hartman." "That was one of the gunnys that helped train Team 2, wasn't it?"

"Gunny Hartman? What the hell was he doing here?" Davies leaned over and looked at the guy. He was older than him, in his mid-forties. Or was, considering what had happened here. It looked like he had gone down fighting.

"Alpha 2-5, you are to proceed to a location marked on your HUD and enter the underground facility. Mission objectives to follow, out."

"Roger that, Overlord. Out." Alpha 2-5 terminated the radio call and noted that his SEALs were talking instead of paying attention to the mission.

Alpha 2-5 got them back on track. "Enough chit-chat. Let's get into that base." The Navy SEALs activated their HUDs and moved toward one of the hidden entrances near the base of the Haghier Mountains that ran on the east side of the island. Thankfully, they didn't have to leg it all the way there; The Light Strike Vehicles that had been airdropped in for them via Chinook helicopters certainly went a long way in enhancing their range of operations, and soon enough, they had reached the mouth of the riverbed that would take them to the huge mountain fortress.

Alpha 2-5 looked at his HUD, looking for the exact coordinates of the entrance. "Where is this entrance again?" he asked Davies.

Davies shifted in his seat and checked on his tablet computer. "Coordinates are at 39, Papa, Yankee, Papa, 97188."

"Oh thanks, I would have never figured it out myself," Gallant coolly said to Davies.

"You're most welcome." The buggy rattled a little bit as it hit some of the rough terrain that made up the riverbed.

"Focus," Alpha 2-5 said to them. "We're coming up on the highway, uh, "S-1", here." After determining their position, Alpha 2-5 decided to tell Overlord of their status.

"Overlord, this is Alpha 2-5, break. We're coming up on the highway and making our way to the entrance point at the grid reference provided, over."

"Acknowledged Alpha 2-5. Be advised, there have been some sightings of enemy Unmanned Ground Vehicles, and they have fired upon Allied units, break. Advise caution, over."

"Unmanned Ground Vehicles? They certainly didn't mention that in the briefing today." Gallant said to the rest of the SEAL team.

"They didn't mention much of anything, period," Davies replied.

"Stow the chatter," Alpha 2-5 said to them. "We're here." The buggy came to the stop by a dried sandbar, and the SEAL team piled out of it.

"Davies, Gallant, camouflage that buggy," Alpha 2-5 ordered. "Pompey, try and see if you can find the entrance."

"I don't see the entrance," Pompey noted, looking around the area.

The four SEALs looked around for an entrance for a minute, before Alpha 2-5 finally found a small lever, camouflaged as a couple of loose branches. He pulled it back, and sure enough, a large door opened up in a hill, leading toward an elevator and some stairs.

"Sure is hot down here," Pompey noticed as they entered the cave.

"Dunno why that is," Alpha 2-5 replied back, trying to keep on the lookout for enemies. "Maybe it takes a lot of energy to run a place like this, and I guess the heat sinks aren't doing their job."

"Oh, that's brilliant answer,' Davies sarcastically replied. "You should stick to killing people than scientific analysis."

"New orders for you," their radio chirped to life. It wasn't Overlord, but another staff officer on the JSTARS.

"Dammit, Overlord must be busy," Gallant said as Alpha 2-5 responded to the radio call.

"This is Alpha 2-5, go ahead."

* * *

"Bravo 3-2, got orders for you," Overlord said from his somewhat comfortable chair, in the lumbering JSTARs aircraft over the Gulf of Aden.

"Go ahead, Overlord."

"Be advised, we have some 'special packages' that need to be retrieved and secured for a MSOR team."

That took Bravo 3-2 off guard for a second. "Special Packages," weren't unheard of in this business, but it would be nice to know sometimes what the hell it was sometimes. "Uh, understood. Can you be more specific Overlord, over?"

"That's a negative. From the intel that we've received, all that we know is that they're in a hanger in the main facility, about five hundred meters from the main train station on the base, break. The hanger should be on the left side of the facility, over."

Bravo 3-2 was with a Delta Force unit, from "A" Squadron. They had just found another hidden entrance, this time on the other side of the island and had made their way toward the main base in record time. It also helped that there wasn't much in the way of resistance, although they had run into those UGVs, which had been quite a shock.

"Understood, Overlord."

The Delta Force team was already in the tram station, looking at the carnage there.

"Jesus, what the fuck happened here?" one of Bravo 3-2's operators said to him. Dead bodies were sprawled everywhere. One man had been completely cut in half by an explosion, while another one had been tossed about like a child's toy. They continued on, cautiously, down the hallway toward hanger A1. The hallways were just as bad, with several dead PMC soldiers lying about, along with more of those UGVs.

"Okay, there's something going on here that really freaks me out." The massive amount of carnage that the Delta Force team had seen coming from the train station all the way to the hanger had been extremely unnerving, even to battle hardened and experienced soldiers as themselves.

"Shit," another operative said, upon seeing the carnage in the hanger. UGVs lay smoking everywhere, bullets had riddled almost every surface in the hanger, and more dead PMC soldiers lay sprawled about.

"Stay on your guard," Bravo 3-2 said to the rest of the team. "Overlord, we're in the hanger. Where is the special package, over?"

"It should be in a room. You might have to force it open, over." Overlord highlighted the room on their HUDs, and the Delta Force team jogged over to that particular location.

"Get that door open," Bravo 3-2 pointed. Two of the operatives went over to it, and upon finding the door locked, set some small explosives to the door.

"Fire in the hole!" They hit the detonator, snapping the door off of its hinges. The operatives stacked up and entered the room.

"Hey, take a look at this," one of the Delta operatives said to Bravo 3-2. There were about five packages on the ground, and despite the markings that said "meat" on them, they looked suspiciously like nuclear warheads. This was confirmed when Bravo 3-2 lifted up the lid one of the closest boxes to him; a warhead stared him back from its position on the floor.

"Overlord, we have the 'special packages' recovered," Bravo 3-2 reported, looking closer at the packages. "Looks like they might be nuclear weapons, rendered inert or otherwise disabled. Got several launch vehicles in the hanger as well, probably Tomahawk missiles."

"Damn," another operative said, shaking his head. "That could have been bad. Glad we got here in time. Who do you think disabled the Tomahawk missiles over there?"

Bravo 3-2 shrugged. "I dunno. Perhaps they thought that it wasn't worth it to use nuclear weapons?" He thought it very strange that only the launch vehicles had been left untouched. Upon further inspection, he saw that someone had maybe looked at disabling it, but it was still a function weapon nonetheless.

"Well, if they did…man, there wouldn't be anything left." That was a very unnerving thought, even to battle-hardened and seasoned Delta vets likes these.

Bravo 3-2 wondered what was taking the MSOR team so long to get to their position. He reached for his radio. "Charlie 4-2, this is Bravo 3-2, status."

"This is Charlie 4-2, we're about two minutes behind you," was the response from the MSOR team. Two minutes later, they showed up, and were just as surprised as the Delta team when they entered the spacious hanger.

"'Sup jarheads," Bravo 3-2 said to the Marine Special Operations Regiment troops as they entered the hanger.

"Holy shit," Charlie 4-2 said, examining the carnage around the hanger. "You do all of this?"

Bravo 3-2 shook his head. "Negative, we found it this way,"

"Looks the Predator struck here or something," Charlie 4-2 quipped. He had been in this business a long time, and he hadn't seen carnage like this since…well, since Iraq. And even that didn't compare to the intensity that the firefight that had apparently happened in this hanger.

"Anyway, wanna see what you're guarding?" Bravo 3-2 asked the Marine leader.

"Sure. Walked all this way to get it, so why not." Charlie 4-2 left his element guarding the hanger and walked over to the room that the Delta Force team was guarding.

"Goddamn," Charlie 4-2 said, looking at the packages still sitting on the ground, all nice and tidy. "That what I think it is?"

Bravo 3-2 nodded to them. "You betcha."

"Well, we'll lock it down tight here, you guys get going to…where ever you're going to."

"Thanks, see you on the other side." Bravo 3-2 led his other three operatives out of the hanger, and left Charlie 4-2 with his squad of MSOR troops guarding the nuclear weapons. They would later be picked up later by a NEST team, and quickly disposed of.

"New orders for you, Bravo 3-2," Overlord announced over the radio as they walked down a hallway.

"Go ahead," Bravo 3-2 replied.

* * *

The President dialed another number from the phone on the desk she had just held the conference from for her COS.

"Madame President." The COS' voice was stoically tired, after putting in more hours than the President.

"Jorge, get me General Williams, I need to speak to him personally."

"Right away." There was a long pause as the call was sent out to the JSTARS plane. Overlord finally answered after a minute of waiting. That was one minute too long for the President, but they were in a middle of a battle.

"General, this is the President," POTUS said to him.

"What can I do for you, Madame President?" Overlord replied.

"I have recently come across some information about a very dangerous group that is part of the Nakanishi Group operating inside the Socotra fortress. I will send some more information about this group, but I want to let your special operations forces on the group there to be fully aware of this group." She turned away from the phone for a second to see the COS come into the room.

"Jorge, what do we have on the SAILOR team?" she asked him. He had the answer immediately, looking at his tablet computer.

"We have the information from that 'Luna' person sent over," he replied.

"Good, have it transmitted to CINCUSSOC, please." In a couple of seconds, Overlord had the information that had been sent to him, puzzling over the odd facts on it.

"The SAILOR team?" he asked the President quizzically.

"Yes, don't call them that. They're a part of the Nakanishi Group, and have been kept extremely secret until now. NSA decrypted some information leftover on their destroyed servers in the UK, and have come across this unit. They are extremely dangerous and are trained especially to take down special operations units." POTUS was glad that Overlord couldn't see her, or else he would have seen that she was sweating bullets. Maybe that wasn't a good analogy, she thought, considering what was going on right now.

"Uh…'specifically trained to take down special operations units?'" That made Overlord's stomach churn a little bit. Units designed to take on special operations units? That certainly sounded a bit farfetched in the slightest, but it was possible. That was the purpose of any country's specops program... "Can you elaborate more specifically on that?" he asked.

"I'm sorry General, that's all the information we have on them at the moment," POTUS replied to him. She was lying, as usual, but they didn't need to know.

"Understood, I'll get the word out to my teams on the ground."


	77. Chapter LXXV: Super smash brothers

**Chapter LXXV: Super smash brothers.**

**1300hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

**_"_**_He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat! He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat: Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on." Battle Hymn of the Republic._

* * *

"No…" The entire SAILOR team was quiet after that entire incident was played out for them, over Beryl and Kunzite's dead bodies and blood staining the large monitor in front of them. The gravity of the situation was apparent; they had been abandoned. Even their most staunch ally, the President of the United States of America, for whatever reason, had turned her back on them. The Japanese PM was a sleezeball, of course he would sell them out, but POTUS? The person that Amy and Mina had saved from being vaporized, let alone several hundreds of thousands more people in Washington D.C and New York City? This was the thanks that they got? This was the reward they had been given after all this time for a job that they didn't even want in the first place?

"Luna…Artemis…somebody, come in!" Serena said into her radio. There was nothing but static. It would seem that what the President had communicated to the world leaders was true; she wanted to erase them.

"I've got nothing from them," Amy noted, also trying to get in touch with their communications officers. Nothing.

"This…this has to be a trick. Beryl's tricking us somehow," Mina said, still in shock.

"I would like to believe you, Mina," Raye said slowly. "But those guys don't look friendly."

She pointed to a couple of videos from several different security cameras that had just popped up on the screen. Several heavily armed men, with similar looking HUDs to their own, swept through some of the rooms they had passed through earlier, killing any remaining PMC members and capturing the wounded or the non-combatants.

Amy quickly started tapping on her tablet computer, looking for some weakness in their communications. She found one. The SOCOM units were using a frequency, while encrypted, were still using some of the Nakanishi proprietary communications equipment that allowed for her to access it using the information the USAF provided to them earlier.

"Wait…I've got a feed onto their communications. Looks like they didn't remove all of their Nakanishi software." She found it ironic that she was using some of the information that was supposed to help the US military, to hinder their efforts.

"Lucky us," Raye facetiously said. Amy tapped into them and put it out of their HUDs.

"Bravo 3-2, proceed up the corridor and toward Beryl's living quarters. Secure and extract any personnel you find on the way."

"And if they resist, Overlord?" Bravo 3-2 asked.

"Bravo 3-2, lethal force is not authorized against non-military personnel who do not comply with your instructions, break. If you encounter hostile non-military personnel, subdue them using pain compliance, over."

"Understood. Out." There was a second before Overlord started talking again.

"All units, all units, this is Overlord, emergency message from USSOCOM. There is an extremely dangerous PMC unit operating in the Socotra fortress. They are armed and have extensive training and experience in combating special operations units."

"How is this different than the other…" one of the special operations operators started to say, but was cut off by Overlord.

"This comes directly from the President of the United States. You are to terminate this group at all costs. Details are being sent to your HUDs concerning this group. Overlord out."

In a second, their faces popped up on their own HUDs, displaying their ages, what weapons they were using, known associates and aliases, and other vital information that might be helpful in taking them down. Except for their location, of course, and even that could be extrapolated from their communications with the US forces after removing the nuclear threat.

"Jesus…oh fuck." Lita said. "Oh fuck, oh fuck. What the fuck do we do now?"

"I don't fucking know!" Raye burst out, trying not to panic.

"Right now, there's at least five or six special operations people outside these doors, ready to take us down," Serena said somewhat calmly. "We have to take them out and…"

"…and then what?!" Raye retorted. "We get out in the open, and they start shooting at us!"

That caused Serena to hesitate. "I…look, let's take out these guys, okay?"

"What are we going to do then?" Amy asked, bringing the conversation back to ground.

"Um…" Serena still didn't know what to do. The feeling of terror started to build up in her stomach, and all she wanted to do was to curl up into a ball and disappear.

"Let's just shoot them," Raye snarled. "I've had enough of this shit."

"They're still on our side, even though we've…we've…" Mina couldn't bring herself to say it, but the Americans and the allied forces were still with them. They couldn't start to kill American soldiers or any other Allied personnel for that matter. Doing that would start them down a path of darkness that would be much crueler than the one they were already on.

"Mina's right," Amy said coldly, still trying to hide her anger at the President for betraying them. "If we start killing American soldiers, that'll just be one quick way for us to die."

"As opposed to…?" Raye said back to her, skeptical of her reasoning.

"Guys! Okay, we're not going to kill them." Serena brainstormed up an idea...something…anything.

"Strip out of your tactical gear, into just your uniform."

Under normal circumstances, the appropriate response would be "What…?!" But this was life or death time, and there was no time for such responses. They complied immediately, with Serena giving them a plan of action.

"When the special operations people come in, that'll take them for surprise, just for a moment. Lita, hide your Taser over there by Beryl's desk. Pick a target and when…" She looked around for a second to see which person should start the melee. "When Mina decks the first guy that comes up to her, we grab a person and beat them. Do not kill them, but make sure that they don't get up. Understood?" She gestured for Mina to get next to the door.

"Got it."

While Mina was moving over to the door, the rest of the team piled their gear near the desk, and hoped that the incoming spec ops people wouldn't notice it right away.

"I can't believe we're doing this," Raye griped.

"We are doing it, and it might just buy us some time," Lita said back, dropping her M249 next to the chair and placing her tactical vest over it.

Mina heard some voices behind the door, and gingerly walked up next to it in order to open it up and surprise them. She prayed that this ridiculous plan would work out. If not, there would be dead blonde girl on the floor out there and more than likely, a massive shootout involving the deaths of probably all the SAILOR team and some of the special operations operatives would result.

The SEAL team was making extremely good progress, although the amount of dead PMC soldiers and destroyed UGVs was a disconcerting one at best. They had notified Overlord of that development, and they had chalked it up to the rogue special operations team that they kept warning them about. Finally, they got past the last security post, and approached Beryl's living quarters. Alpha 2-5 reached for his radio and contacted Overlord of their progress.

"This is Alpha 2-5, were ready to stack up on…Beryl's living quarters, over." They were inside the foyer to Beryl's office/room, and were admiring the luxury facilities that she enjoyed. Even the personal assistant's desk, located right before the door to the office, was a nice, hardy oak, with a state of the art computer, recording device (just in case), and a gun underneath it. Gallant checked the weapon; it was a P99. He disassembled it and left it on the floor.

"Roger that. Bravo 3-2 is right behind you, wait for them to move up and breach together."

"Affirmative."

"Who the hell has a name like Beryl?" Davies said to no one in particular, wondering his thoughts out loud.

Gallant shrugged. "I dunno."

The patter of heavy boots alerted the SEAL team of Bravo 3-2; A large black man in his late thirties approached them, M4 SOPMOD in hand. They opened up the doors behind the D-Force team and stepped in.

"Hey." Bravo 3-2, said to the SEALs as he approached with three other operators.

"Nice of you to join us, D-Boys," Alpha 2-5 joked with them. "Someone has to be late the party."

Bravo 3-2 rolled his eyes at 2-5. "Hush. You wouldn't be here today if I didn't back you up during that Nigeria mission."

"Alright, alright. Care to go in first then?"

Bravo 3-2 gestured toward the door. "Nah, I'll trust your ever-present intelligence and experience. You first."

"Geez." Alpha 2-5 and his SEAL team stacked up on the door, on the right side, while Bravo 3-2 stacked up on the left.

"Okay, this is how it's going to go; Bravo, open the doors, and my team will go in first. You cover us and come in hard after we go in. Don't know what to expect in there, so we're going to put a camera in there first."

Alpha 2-5 got a small fiber optic camera that could be slipped under doors to see if anyone was inside.

"Did you get anything on thermal?" Davies asked one of the D-Force operatives.

He shook his head. "Nah, everything is hot down here; it all blends together. Couldn't get a good read the second we stepped into this place."

"I'm not seeing anything," Alpha 2-5 said, retracting the camera. "We're set to go in."

Bravo 3-2 nodded, and grabbed the handle for the door. At this point, Beryl had not installed any security locks of that sort on her own personal office and room; if you had gotten past all the security measures at this point, then a dinky lock or keypad wasn't going to stop you.

Alpha 2-5 readied his M4 SOPMOD and prepared to breach. "Ready? One…two…"

The door suddenly opened.

"What the…" There was a very timid, blonde girl, a military style uniform, looking extremely scared and confused at the big, burly special operations people point weapons at her.

"Hands above your head!" Bravo 3-2 yelled at her, but that was made moot by him and his team wrestling her to the ground, while Alpha 2-5 rushed inside the room to find four more girls inside, all in the same shape of the person they captured by the door.

"Jesus. Someone got Beryl here…" Davies looked at the headless body of Beryl and the shredded corpse of Kunzite. "Overlord, we have confirmation that Beryl and Kunzite are dead."

"Roger that, we see the damage here." Overlord also that they had several girls in the picture, but they didn't look anything like the information that had been sent to them via POTUS. They were slightly more muscular, toned, and frazzled than the pictures that had been provided to them, ostensibly by the Japanese government. They forgot to tell them that those pictures were six months old.

The other operatives secured the four other girls in the room, making them put their hands above their head. Bravo 3-2 turned Mina over to Alpha 2-5 who led her toward one of the walls and got out some flexcuffs; it was a precaution, nothing could be left to chance.

"What's your name?" he said, trying to calm her down. She was extremely tense and nervous, as would any untrained civilian would be in this case. Alpha 2-5 figured that they might have been sex slaves or prostitutes trafficked over to the island in order to relieve any "tension" on the island that would have inevitably resulted from having lots of grown men with few women around. The uniforms were probably just part of the job, like most of the other civilian personnel they had found around here. Some bastard really got off to that kind of thing, Alpha 2-5 thought.

"Name…? Um…Mina." Her English was good, in any case.

"Mina, well, we're going to take you out of here and…" Something clicked in Alpha 2-5's head. Mina…Mina…why did that sound familiar? He stopped reaching for the flexcuffs and touched his HUD, going back through the communications with Overlord. He came across a communication with him not more than ten minutes ago that had a description of the girl that sat in front of him looking very scared.

"Considered armed…and extremely dangerous?" Alpha 2-5 turned his attention back to Mina, but it was already too late. A rapidly closing fist impacted with his face, stunning him for a quick second. It was going to take much more than a quick punch to the face to bring down a Navy SEAL, but that's why Mina followed it up with a kick to the groin, then to the ribs. Again, the SEAL could take the punishment, and recovered from staggering about to turn and face his attacker, drawing his sidearm in the process. Mina grabbed his arm and shoved the weapon toward the ceiling, causing it to go off. She hit his arm several times, each time loosening the grip on the P226 that he was carrying. Finally, on the third try, she got Alpha 2-5 to drop the weapon on the floor, only to get her hair yanked back in the process. Mina screamed in pain and delivered a lucky kick to his face, stunning Alpha 2-5. He let go, and Mina moved in for the (metaphorical) kill. She dive tackled him and started punching his face, one right after the other until she had broken his nose, cheekbones, jaw and several teeth. Alpha 2-5 was completely out of it at this point, and couldn't fight back.

Lita had a much easier time. She smashed Gallant's face in with no problem and put him in a chokehold that blacked him out in a couple of seconds. It would buy her some time at least. Lita reached behind Beryl's desk, knocking over a glass of scotch and drawing the much mocked Taser from a chair. She snapped it up and aimed at the three Delta operatives who were trying to take aim at the melee that was going on at the back of the room. They couldn't get a shot off for fear of hitting their own men (even if they were SEALs), and were momentarily distracted by the melee so that they didn't see Lita aiming at them for a second. Their training and perception though, detected movement and the operatives swung their M4 carbines around to try to engage the new threat. Lita however, was just a millisecond faster; in quick succession, she fired the Taser at the first target closest to her. The operatives were standing in a staggered line, with the operative closest to Lita no more than two meters away. The CO2 cartridge sent the prongs flying into the air and hitting him in the exposed arm area. Speed, surprise and overwhelming firepower was the hallmark of SOCOM and normally this would have been no contest. But it wasn't.

He was already recoiling, trying to control the violent shocks that the prongs were sending through his body. It was possible to shrug off the effects of the Taser, but that took a lot of training and effort, and D-Force rightfully assumed that the best way to avoid being paralyzed (or shot for that matter) was not being shot in the first place, unsurprisingly. The effects of the Taser were diminished and not as effective on the operatives as other people, but they still slowed them down for a couple of seconds. That was all that Lita needed.

Quickly, Lita fired off the rest of the cartridges, hitting the remaining two Delta Force operatives in their exposed areas, and rushed forward keeping the triggering mechanism depressed sending out the electrical pulse that kept the operatives immobile. A quick hit to the face by her left arm knocked them out for a second, just enough time to put some flexcuffs on them that she had. In about twenty seconds, three Delta Force operatives had been subdued, a feat unto itself that would have impressed anyone else, especially other special operations operatives. Lita didn't care though. She was just trying to stay alive.

With that threat gone, she turned her attention to the rest of the team. Mina seemed to have her threat under control, and was running to save Amy, who was having a really bad time.

Davies had been repeatedly smacked on the head with his own rifle, and was trying to draw his sidearm in order to kill the dumb blonde in front of him. Serena, on the other hand, was trying to do everything short of killing him, but the amount of CQB training that Serena had was barely doing anything against the big, burly spec ops guy in front of her. She dodged another punch by the machine gunner, and quickly hit him in the ribs before retreating momentarily from his counter-attack.

Mina saw that Amy had picked a fight with a big, burly man (even in comparison with the other operatives, he made them look small), and while she put up a good fight, she was losing rapidly.

Pompey was trying to pin this small girl down, but she would simply not give up. After having his rifle knocked out of his hands, and his pistol literally disassembled in front of him, he had tried to administer a no-holds barred beatdown, like the one he used to give the recruits at OTC, during the CQB section anyway.

Amy refused to go down. She would not give up hope, and despite being tossed about, having a series of nasty punches to the face, kicks to the ribs and pelvic region, she continued to fight on. The only thing that would slow the big guy down was by disrupting his ability to think and to respond to her actions. So, in a final desperate attempt, she managed to pick herself off of the floor and grab onto his tactical vest. She smashed her head repeatedly into Pompey's face, breaking his nose and hers in the process, sending spasms of pain through both their heads. Pompey recoiled, as did Amy, and they both fell back, dazed and confused. Mina finally came to the rescue, delivering a kick to his right leg and then stomping down on it repeatedly until the leg bone broke through the skin. Pompey collapsed onto the ground and screamed out in pain, even more so when Mina grabbed some flexcuffs from his tactical vest and restrained him, zipping them so tight that it drew blood.

"And stay down," she hissed, kicking him one last time.

Serena had finally got a handle on her target, snapping his wrist and pummeling his face with a bust of Beryl that she had on a stand near the TV screen. Davies saw some stars briefly, then staggered about trying to regain his balance. Serena simply stuck out her leg and tripped him, and that was enough to send him falling to the floor.

Raye was the last one to take her target down. The Delta Force squad leader, Bravo 3-2, had been putting up a good fight, but now it was five against one, and he didn't stand much of chance after that.

Raye delivered a couple of quick punches, which were easily deflected by Bravo 3-2, but several kicks to the groin by Serena, and a left hook by Lita to the chest brought him down to his knees. The last thing he remembered was falling to the floor, noticing the grimace on his opponent's face as he blacked out.

* * *

"Fuck…" Raye stood gasping in the middle of the room, surrounded by the flexcuffed and unconscious special operations operatives. "Just…fuck."

Serena barely could pick herself off of the ground. "How is everyone?" she asked, wincing in pain.

Amy felt her nose; it was broken. She closed her eyes and breathed in, and after waiting a second, she reset it. The pain snapped through her body, but it was over in a scant couple of seconds.

"I'm fine." Serena winced as Amy did that, but then again, she had more medical training than the rest of them.

"Let me take a look at that," Amy said to Lita, who was holding her prosthetic arm a bit limply.

"I don't know what I did to it," she complained to her.

"Oh…" Amy saw some damage to the mechanics of the arm. There wasn't much she could do about though; without proper specialized facilities, the arm was going to get worse and worse until it just finally snapped. "Lita, this isn't good. Just…" She would have said, "Try not to use it as much," but that was kind of an impossibility due to their circumstances. Lita still got the hint though.

"Got it Amy."

"How are your legs, Serena?" Amy turned her attention to SAILOR Moon.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she insisted. Amy took a look anyway; despite the fighting, she was in better shape than Lita. "You're good here," Amy said, finishing up her examination. Serena took a few seconds to catch her breath, then started giving out orders again.

"Lita, get these guys into that closet. They're going to be conscious soon, and we can't have them chasing after us."

It wasn't so much that they were "unconscious"; they were more stunned after taking a severe beating. Several of the operatives that Lita had stunned were groaning in pain: Lita depressed her Taser again, making sure that they complied with her.

"Help me get these guys into her closet over there, will you?" Lita said to Raye. "Mina, clean the place out and make sure that there's nothing in there that they could use to escape."

"Got it." Mina went over to the closet and started tossing out the clothes, expensive shoes and anything else that might be useful for a person to escape. It was only a delaying tactic though; it would only be a matter of "when" they would escape and not "if". These were highly trained special operations operatives and a couple of measly flexcuffs were not going to stop them.

"Put all of their equipment there," Serena said, pointing near the desk in the center of the room. "Take some ammo if you need it, but I don't want them to have their equipment when they escape."

Amy searched through their equipment and noticed some special grenades in one of their pockets. "I've got some thermite grenades here," she said.

"Good, we'll need those," Serena said, putting on her flecktarn uniform and tactical vest. "They'll have some ammo as well, grab what you can."

Amy started to take out the STANAG magazines from the operatives' vests, and placed them on the floor, methodically lining them up so that the other team members could get them. None of them had her type of ammunition, but that wasn't a big concern, considering she hadn't fired very much (at least, in comparison to someone like Lita). Still, she should probably pick up something to replace her P90…nope. Amy looked at one of the M4 SOPMODs; it had a biometric sensor on it that would lock the gun up if someone other than the original operator picked it up. Damn. She wondered why they didn't have those types of devices on their own guns, or the other Nakanishi PMC guys, but then figured that those things were extremely expensive. USSOCOM was probably one of the few organizations in the world that would have the means to do so. Even the Nakanishi Group wasn't that advanced (or willing to pay the cost) for those kinds of gadgets.

As Amy was musing over that, a loud noise interrupted her.

"Overlord to Alpha 2-5, come in, over."

One of the HUDs had been dropped on the floor near the piled up equipment, and Amy picked it up to look at it. The HUD was similar to hers', with a more blocky appearance than her streamlined one.

"Overlord, Alpha 2-5, come in, over."

"What should I do?" Amy asked Serena. She held the device in her hands, gingerly, like it was a newly folded origami crane.

Serena came over to her, after stuffing her vest pockets full of ammunition. "Answer it. Make sure they get this; 'We're not their enemy, and we're only just trying to get back home. We can explain everything, and that there must be some misunderstanding between us and President." She paused for a second. "Well, something to that extent."

"Fine." Amy took off her HUD and put Alpha 2-5's on.

"Who is this?" Overlord immediately asked. That wasn't Alpha 2-5, and from what it looked like, it was one of those girls that was on the "shoot on sight" order he had gotten earlier that day.

"My name is Amy Mizuno," was the response.

"Whoever you are, get off of this network. This is a military only channel and any interference…" Overlord started to say, but was cut off by Amy.

"Listen, dumbass," Amy snarled. Everyone in the room looked at her. Now that was a new sight, seeing SAILOR Mercury angry. "Your special operations operatives are disabled, and we're about to burn their equipment. I know you got your orders from the President, so listen to this. Me and one of my friends here..." She looked at Mina, in order to get her point across, "We saved the President's life about two weeks ago when the Nakanishi Group decided to attack the White House."

"Ma'am, I don't care who you are, if you've killed those men…"

"We haven't killed them, like I said before." Amy got up and walked to the closet, where Lita and Raye had just finished up dragging the rest of the groaning spec ops operatives in there. Overlord got a good look at the humbled men in the closet before Amy took off the HUD and pointed it straight at herself, so that Overlord could see her.

Overlord winced a little bit before recovering his stoic face. Years of being in the Army deadened one's ability to feel pain, but even after seeing the prized SEALs and D-Force operatives beat up like that, the damage that they had inflicted on her was just as bad, maybe even worse. Her face was a wreck, blood streamed from a gash on her nose, multiple cuts on the cheeks, a slightly swollen eye…it was bad.

"Listen to me, sir." Amy had also recovered herself from her angry outburst, and tried to make up for it. Pissing off special operations commanders was not a good idea. "Just put us through to your President. We can sort this all out."

"You don't give orders to me, Ma'am," Overlord shot back. "But..."

He could stall for some time at least, just to figure out what in the hell was going on. They had spared the lives of the SEALs and D-Force boys, and were now asking for an audience with the President, claiming that they had actually saved her. This was just too ridiculous.

"Fine. I'll get back to you."

"Thanks. Out." Amy terminated the conversation and pocketed the HUD in her tactical vest. "I'm done here," she said to Serena. Serena nodded her thanks, and turned her attention to the massive pile of equipment from the special operations operatives.

"Okay, is everyone stocked up on ammo?" Serena asked the entire team. "Yes? Good. Raye, torch it."

"With pleasure." Raye pulled the pin on the thermite grenade she was holding in her hand, and tossed it on the pile of discarded equipment. It exploded in a ball of white light and flame, destroying the radios, guns, and ballistic vests on top of the pile before moving down to where the grenades and ammo they couldn't carry had been piled up.

"Let's get out of here before the explosives cooks off," Serena stoically said. The SAILOR team jogged out of Beryl's room as the thermite detonated the explosives and extra ammunition the team couldn't carry; the rounds from the exploding ammunition flew everywhere, pinging off furniture and burrowing inside walls. Inside the closet, the tied up operatives flinched at the explosions, but in a scant couple of seconds, it had stopped. Their equipment was now sufficiently ruined, with their vests burned to a crisp, their weapons turned to slag, and their electronics melted down to goo. At least they escaped with their lives.

* * *

"What are we going to do now?" Raye said to the rest of the team, leaving the scene of destruction behind them. "We're going to get slaughtered by those soldiers if we don't figure something out."  
"I don't know." Serena didn't have a plan of action. Amy didn't. Mina didn't. Lita didn't. And certainly not Raye.

"We can't stay inside this facility anymore," Lita said, after about a minute of silence.

"Why not?" Raye shot back, but it was more of a half-hearted effort on her part; she really didn't know what to do.

"Well, in here, we're trapped. Sooner or later, those spec ops guys are going to get us. At least out there, we might have a little bit of a chance."

"Anyone disagree with that course of action?" Serna asked the entire group. There really wasn't much they could do about it. Going outside…maybe they could find some help, or surrender to someone that might take them in. Some of the other nations other than the United States were out there; maybe India? Amy and Mina looked at each other, wondering how that work out.

"Where's the entrance that these guys came out of?" Serena asked Amy. They were now walking down the halls they had fought through not a couple of hours ago; scattered youma, destroyed by gunfire and explosives, dead PMC soldiers littering the hallways, their blood making the floor slick. Mina gingerly stepped over one of them, wishing that it really hadn't come to this.

"It's near the tram station, about three hundred meters down the hallway and to the right."

"Thanks." They continued to walk forward, their weapons at the ready, but again, no targets presented themselves. The youma were all destroyed or outside, fighting the landing forces or spec ops, and the PMC soldiers and personnel were surrendering to them outside.

Fifteen minutes later, they came to entrance. It was discreetly located in a janitor's closet, which had already been opened by the other D-Force operatives. Inside, a small hallway lead to an elevator and some stairs that seemed to go on for a little bit, ending in a cave.

"There's an elevator over there, but it's out of order," Raye noted, pressing the call button. The power was out anyway, thanks to Amy.

"Stairs?" Serena asked.

"Right next to them," Amy pointed out.

"Good. Let's take them."

The SAILOR team descended down the flight of stairs to the hidden entrance that would lead them out of this facility. A dry wind howled in the stairwell, ominously cooing at their misfortune. Serena wondered what the hell they were going to do now. They certainly couldn't just walk out there...but to stay here was certain death. But out there was certain death.

"Well, looks like this is it. Now or never. Amy, are you ready with that HUD?"

"Yes Serena."

"Let's do this."

The SAILOR team stepped out into the sunlight.


	78. Chapter LXXVI: Nation shall speak…

**Chapter LXXVI: Nation shall speak peace unto the nation.**

**1300hrs, 26 December 2013, Al Mukalla, Yemen.**

_"Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather (War bellows, blazing in scarlet battalions).  
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Generals order their soldiers to kill).  
And gather it all in a bunch of heather (And to fight for a cause they've long ago forgotten).  
Then she'll be a true love of mine." Simon and Garfunkel's version of Scarborough Fair _

* * *

The BBC crew that had filmed Zoicite's death had yet again, been denied access to the aircraft carriers, or any ship for that matter. The NATO and Allied ships that were right outside Socotra were not allowing any media coverage, period; even the venerable CNN, normally allowed access to such operations, had been given the boot. They were stuck on the coast of Yemen, desperately looking for anything that would make the news. They got lucky, and found exactly what they were looking for in the city of Al Mukalla, the capitol of the Hadhramaut Governorate, to which Socotra used to belong before they were bought out by the Nakanishi Group.

"Ms. Hanson, please tell us what you've seen over the last couple of months," the reporter asked a young, blonde lady, who was standing on the docks with them. Several fishing boats drifted lazily in the background, kept in the port by the military; they didn't want people nosing their way into the battle outside. Which was a pretty long shot in the first place, considering Socotra was some 200-odd kilometers out there.

"Well, we've tried to go to Socotra, but we were turned back every time by Yemenis; they intercepted us halfway out to the island. Whatever they were doing there, they certainly didn't want us finding it out."

The interviewee, Kathie Hanson, was working with the United World Relief Fund, a humanitarian group responsible for providing aid to various groups in the Middle East and Africa. A graduate of a small Midwestern college, she had worked in India and China teaching English and doing various social justice projects including, but not limited to; anti-human trafficking operations, anti-drug training, anti-prostitution initiatives, sensitivity training for public servants and the cleaning of Bangalore, also known as the Ugly Indian Project. She had been working for the UWRF for a couple of months now, and her adventures for the mysterious island of Socotra had been a private mission of hers ever since she came to Yemen. 50,000 people had been forcibly evicted from that island and dumped into the city of Al Mukalla, without any means to support themselves or to get back to their homeland. Once a month, she had ventured out on a rickety old boat to travel the 240 or so kilometers to the island, only to be turned back by the Yemeni Navy. A frustrating situation, but she was determined to find out what in the hell was going on there.

"And why do you think they were turning you back?"

"The Yemeni government has had a deal with the Nakanishi Group, stating that they would give the island to them, in exchange for development with their oil and gas industry. The reality of the situation is that Yemen is going to run out of oil in four years' time, and no amount of development in that sector is going to change that fact." She was very enthusiastic about her subject material, that was for sure. The reporter continued on with her series of questioning.

"And did you ever think that they had any sort of military presence on the Island?" the reporter asked her.

Kathie shook her head. "Of course not. I didn't think that they had any sort of armed force there until last week. Ever since then, me and my team have tried constantly to find out what exactly the hell they got all the stuff there. We found out from this shipyard, thousands of tonnes of high explosives, ammunition and other items were shipped there in 2008."

"In 2008?" The reporter couldn't believe the lucky streak they were on. First Italy, with that massive shootout; the producer had been ecstatic at that find and had written a glowing performance review of her and her cameraman. A bonus and a raise were also in order for them as well. Now, this was going to start raising red flags everywhere, and certainly somebody at Broadcasting House was going to start digging and put all the pieces together.

"Well, what do you think about…" The cameraman suddenly saw a couple of flashes in the air, and quickly pointed his camera in that direction.

"Goddamn, what was that!" A massive explosion occurred in the air, some distance away but close enough for the sound wave to reach them. It looked to be like a large aircraft had exploded, and a couple of minutes later, two military jets flew overhead. The reporter motioned to the cameraman to try to focus in on that particular event while she gave what little commentary she could. Debris fell to the ground, and several boats were already heading out to see if they could pull anyone out of the wreckage. Despite the military presence, they didn't exactly seem to go ahead and stop them, letting the fishermen pass but keeping a close eye on their movements. If they wanted to pick up wreckage, fine.

The reporter started speaking into her microphone rapidly, trying to make up shit on the spot in order to add some substance to the video. "We don't know what's going on here, but it appears that military airplanes have engaged hostile targets closer to Yemen. What this means about the situation on Socotra has yet to be determined."

"Amber, we should get some more shots of that crash over there," the camera guy said to the reporter.

"Yeah, go ahead and get set up by the pier. I'll join you shortly. John, we're moving to get more shots of the crash, if we can. I don't know what we can do though, since the military has blocked off access for the media." She turned to Kathie, apologizing to her for delaying the interview. It was just business, that's all.

"I'm sorry Ms. Hanson, but if you would be willing, we would certainly appreciate it if you could wait for a couple of minutes while we get some more footage of that crash. We would be more than willing to compensate you for your time, if need be."

Kathie nodded to them, half expecting them to run off like many reporters beforehand, bored with her exposition on social justice issues. "I'll wait right here." But hell, more money was always a plus; she would get her point across and get paid. They got their story, and it was a win/win for everyone. She sat on a concrete ledge, and watched the drama unfold in front of her.

"Andy, let's set up over here." About 100 meters away, there was a small pier for fishing boats and the like, and it offered a good site for viewing the crash. "Get a wide shot of the smoke on the horizon over there."

"Can you hear me?" The anchor in the studio said yes, as did her producer. "Okay, as you can see here, there has been a plane crash, or a shoot down of a military aircraft of some sort near here." Several more jets roared overhead, and the camera jerked upward to reveal some F-22s flying back over the town and toward Socotra. "The military activity around here has significantly increased, and we don't know if the forces on Socotra are winning against the Nakanishi forces on the island."

They stayed there for a couple more minutes, with the reporter chattering on about nothing and trying to make news where there was none. Finally, they went back over to Kathie, who had been sitting on a bench. There was still some smoke and flame on the horizon, where the plane had gone down. Some fishing ships had already started to leave the harbor, going out to see if they could recover anything from that crash. Maybe even some people, if they got lucky.

"Nice one," the producer in London said to her over her earpiece. "Keep up that interview with the blonde girl there, we need all the airtime that we can fill, and it looks like you've hit paydirt with that."

"Will do." The reporter returned to interviewing Kathie, who was a little bit shaken up by the explosion nearby.

"Ms. Hanson, do you suppose after the Nakanishi presence on the island of Socotra has been removed, that the people displaced will be able to move back there?"

"I…I…" she stuttered for a second before getting back into the groove of the interview. "I would certainly hope so, and I would also hope that the United States and other nations would assist Yemen in restoring the island of Socotra to its original form, although I fear the damage by the corporate greed of the Nakanishi Group is too great for the both the people who were displaced, as well as the environment there."

"What do you mean, the environment?"

Kathie gave the reporter a death glare, but the reporter had to ask these questions about the island; not everyone was an expert on remote islands in the Gulf of Aden.

"Socotra is one of the most isolated places in the world, and they have a truly staggering amount of biodiversity; 1/3 of all plants and animals cannot be found anywhere else in the world. When the Nakanishi Group moved in, they started massive construction projects that more than likely destroyed this biodiversity."

"And afterwards, when the military has removed the Nakanishi Group from Socotra?"

Kathie shrugged, wearily. "I can't tell what'll happen after that. All that I know is that there's 50,000 people without a means to support themselves, abandoned by their government and the world at large."

Sensing that she was running out of interview material, the reporter decided to terminate the interview.

"Thank you very much for your time Ms. Hanson." She said in a soft tone, using that Received Pronunciation to soothe whatever tension there was in the air. The reporter had had to contend with worse interviewees, and this one was significantly better than those.

Kathie nodded. "You're welcome."

"Back to you, Steve, in the studio."

The crew stopped filming, with the audio guy finally being able to put that stupid shotgun mike down and take a smoke.

"Thanks Ms. Hanson." The reporter pulled out a wad of a couple thousand Yemeni rial, and handed it to her. It wasn't BBC policy, of course, to engage in such conduct, but they had to get the news story and some rules had to be broken.

"You're welcome," Kathie said back to her, wondering for a second if she should take the money, but then decided that she would; if nothing else, she could explain it as "administrative" income or something like that.

"If you find out anything else…" the reporter tantalizing said to her, "Well, there might be some more of that in store."

"I'll keep that in mind, thanks." Kathie took the bills and stuffed it in her purse, and walked off to peruse the docks. That probably wasn't a good idea, being a single female in a foreign nation, but then against, Kathie didn't give a shit right now with that entire battle raging on that island.

"I hope that you didn't pay her off or something like that," her producer said over the satellite phone a couple of minutes later, as she was smoking her third cigarette.

"I can't comment on that sort of practice," the reporter replied sardonically.

"Right. Well, keep up the good work, we'll be asking you for some more stories on the battle." The producer looked at his iPad, keeping tabs on the rest of the news crews they had in the area at the moment. It was kind of hilarious, in a sick sense; the military was besieging Socotra and not allowing press access, so the media was besieging the military around the Gulf of Aden. CNN had even sent some of their people to Somalia, not to cover the pirates or the civil war that had been plaguing the country for years, but to maybe…maybe get a glimpse of the battle that was going on at that obscure island.

"What about the damaged ships in Aden?"

"We've got several crews there already covering the situation, although like with the fleet out at sea, the US military, the MOD, or any other allied force refuses to speak with the media due to security concerns."

The reporter grimaced mockingly. She took another pull on the cigarette, enjoying the stress relief. "Jesus, this media ban is really putting a crimp in my style. I guess the Italians weren't the only ones in a totalitarian mood."

That got a laugh from the producer. "Hey, we've always known that Great Britain has been on a collision course with 1984. It's only a matter of time now," the producer joked. "Now find me some more footage."

"Fine, fine. We'll take a small break and then get back to reporting." The reporter finished her third cigarette and tossed into the sea. She got another one out and lit up.

The producer heard her take the smoke in. "Sounds good. And you shouldn't smoke as much."

That got a sigh from the reporter. "You're not the one down here doing the work."

"True enough. Have a good one."

"Yeah, thanks guv." She terminated the phone call, and stuffed the rest of the Mayfield Superkings in a pocket near the sign on her bullet-resistant vest that said "PRESS".

"Andy! Rahul! Time to get a move on!" She yelled to the two men who were sitting next to their rented van. "You can take a break when we get to the next location."

"Where are we going?" the cameraman said to her.

It took a moment for the reporter to respond. She was still collecting her thoughts after the series of events that had brought them to this point. "I don't know," the reporter said. "Just drive somewhere so that we can get some more news footage."


	79. Chapter LXXVII: …are against us

**Chapter LXXVII: …are against us.**

**1400hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen**

_"Why, why, Lord, Why do you reward me thus? I gave jewels for the Madonna's mantle, And songs for the stars, in heaven, That shone forth with greater radiance. In the hour of grief, Why, why, Lord,  
Ah, why do you reward me thus?" Vissi d'arte, Tosca_

_"There's a man going 'round taking names. And he decides who to free and who to blame. Everybody won't be treated all the same. There'll be a golden ladder reaching down. When the man comes around." Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around._

* * *

"Bringing up the drone feed right now, Madame President." The video zoomed in on the people who had just left one of the entrances to the base. The Air Force had finally unfucked itself and had several drones now flying over the island, in addition to the KH-13 satellite hovering above in space. This particular drone was flying over one of the entrances to the base that the special operations people have entered earlier. POTUS squinted at the screen…she could see someone…no, five people walking out of the entrance.

"I don't believe it…" It was the SAILOR team. They had survived inside…and presumably, all the special operations forces that had gone in after them were now dead or subdued.

"Ma'am, I'm getting a message from USCINCSOC," Jorge, the COS, said to her.

"General," POTUS said to USCINCSOC, very displeased. "What is that unit doing alive?"  
"Ma'am," Overlord said to her. "They took both of the SEALs and Delta Force teams we sent down there."

The first words that flashed into the President's mind were there usual; Oh Shit. If the SAILOR team could take down Delta and SEAL units, then there was no stopping them, short of bombarding the place to smithereens. Of course, that would let everyone know that something was up, and generate more suspicion on her part. "And how do you know this?"

"We were contacted by them, directly. They used one of the SEAL's HUDs to talk to me, and they wished to be left alone, and that you should retract whatever order that you gave them."

POTUS was now in a bind. She could retract the order…but they had come too far just for this team to mess things up.

"Madame President." Amy's voice snapped out of her thoughts. POTUS wanted to respond, but the decision had already been made. There was no turning back. The President had already made up her mind long before then.

"Madame President, please, retract your orders. I don't know why you've done this…but it's just another trick that the Nakanishi Group is setting up for you. Whatever you've heard from them, I promise you, we can make it up to you. Please, Madame President, all we want is this nightmare to be over…" Amy started to tear up. "All we want to do is go home and be with our parents, to get on with our lives that were shattered six months ago by an explosion that took more than our arms and legs. The Nakanishi Group took our freedom, our dreams, our hopes, whatever great plan we had for our lives and tossed them out the door." The tears ran down her face freely now. Mina came up to her and placed her arms around Amy, comforting her. She cried just as much as she was; in fact, the entire SAILOR team was in tears now, the magnitude of the situation was so great.

"Whatever you do after this point, if you continue down this path, they will have ultimately won. You will have secured their legacy in history by letting our story die here."

She took a breath in, and wiped away the tears on her face. Amy removed herself from Mina's embrace, and looked into the HUD one last time.

"We're going to come outside now. Make your decision. If you let us live…then, contact us again through Overlord on our own HUDs. If not…then I guess we'll know."

Amy placed the HUD on the ground, and stomped on it, and then again, breaking it into a bunch of pieces.

"What do you think she'll do?" Raye asked her, wiping away some of the tears on her face. She was just as shaken as the rest of them.

"I don't know," Amy said, looking at the ground.

"Hey, what's that?" Lita pointed to something near the entrance, some fifty meters out. She jogged over to it.

"Lita, be careful!" Serena said to her, but Lita was already over there, looking at it.

"It's a buggy," she said.  
Amy took a look at it with her HUD. "A Light Strike Vehicle, used by special operations forces, especially by the US."

"Can we use it to get out of here?" Serena asked her.

"Yeah…I think. Let me try to get it started up."

While Amy and Mina worked on getting the vehicle up and running, Lita and Raye walked around the vehicle, inspecting it.

"That's a lot of guns on it."

"Well, special operations forces use it for behind enemy lines type of work, so…"

"Lita, Raye, pull security why don't you?" Serena said to them tersely.

"Fine." Lita and Raye stopped their gawking and began patrolling around the vehicle, looking for any more of those infernal youma/UGV thingies that had given them so much trouble over the last couple of hours.

"What are you going to do when we get out of here?" Lita asked Raye, who was fiddling with her HUD.

"I don't fucking know," Raye snapped back. "If we even fucking get out of here."

"Raye, I'm just trying to make conversation, come on."

Raye sighed, knowing that her response was a very bad one, but they were under a lot of stress.

"Sorry. Okay, so hypothetically speaking?"

"Yeah, hypothetically speaking."

"Well, I would take over the temple, provided that hasn't gone to hell after grandpa…" She hesitated for a second, remembering her late grandfather. "After grandpa died. I'm sure that my whore of a dad probably sold it or something."

"Whore of a dad?" Lita thought that was kind of harsh. At least she had parents. But then again, maybe it was better to have good dead parents than deadbeat alive parents. She kicked at a pebble on the ground.

"I thought we had this conversation awhile back," Raye added. "My dad. Going to be PM, but wasn't…"

"Oh yeah, forgot about that."

"What about you?" Raye asked, a bit tired of all these questions that Lita was asking her. Mostly, she just wanted to go to a nice spa, have a nice bath, put her feet up and take a nice long sleep.

"Same as always. Get married. Have kids. Run a shop. The end."

Raye scrunched her nose up at that statement. "That sounds boring."

"After this? " Lita said. "I could use some boredom, thank you very much."

"You got a point there," Raye said. There was a slight pause in the conversation as Raye and Lita continued to patrol the area. "Although I'm not quite sure if a shop will do so good in this economy."

"Hey, I didn't say I would be living in Japan," Lita said back.

Raye shrugged at that. They continued to patrol the area, looking out for any targets. There didn't seem to be any though, surprisingly.

"What do you think about Amy and Mina?" Raye asked Lita, looking at the duo try to start the buggy up. Amy was on her tablet computer, looking at the specifications of the vehicle while Mina was poking at some of the wires near the steering column.

"What about them?"

"You know, being together and all that?" Raye was sure persistent in getting into other people's business.

"Mina seems to be more into it that Amy is," Lita replied, taking another look at Amy and Mina. Amy seemed to be a little flustered, apparently at something that Mina had said. Mina on the other hand, was trying not to laugh. Even that made Lita smile a little bit. At least someone could find humor in this shit situation.

"Amy doesn't seem to show much emotion though. It might be one of those type of relationships."

"Raye, stop butting into other people's business," Lita said to her.

"But Amy kept poking around in my porn stash!" Raye protested. That was my own personal stuff she thought to herself.

"Come on, it was all in good fun," Lita said back with a smile. "She probably won't do it again after this. Plus, you might have some more ammo on them once the relationship really heats up."

Raye shook her head. "Uh, huh. I'll believe that when I see it."

"Got it." The buggy started up with a roar, interrupting their conversation.

"Nice work Amy," Mina said, giving her a big hug. Amy tried not to wince too much, since she still was in pain from the massive melee with the special operations operatives back in Beryl's room.

"Everyone, climb on inside," Serena said, pointing to the buggy. "Mina, you drive."

"Sounds good." Mina climbed in the front seat, along with Amy and Serena, who crammed themselves in the passenger seat. Lita and Raye got into the back, with the mounted machine gun. Raye wondered how this was going to help them, as it was going to make them an even bigger target. Oh well.

Mina floored the accelerator, and start to drive down the riverbed.

* * *

The Marines guarding the town had been gathering up the bodies of their fallen comrades onto some of the LCACs. It had been a grizzly task; some of the bodies simply weren't. Arms and legs were everywhere, and while some black humor made itself apparent ("I've got two right hands and two right legs!" one Marine noted), they did the work in silence, respecting their fallen comrades.

A Marine lieutenant, HItman 3-1, was collecting the dogtags from the Marines when a bullet snapped past. He quickly dove for cover, as did the rest of the Marines in the town. Hitman 3-1 could see several UGVs coming at them from the mountains, their machine guns opening fire at the Marine company. He got on his radio to inform command of the recent developments.

"This is Hitman 3-1, we are under extremely heavy fire from enemy UGVs, over."

His radio crackled with the response. "Hitman 3-1, this is Gambit Actual, tank support is on the way, just hang in there, over."

Tank support had been "on the way" for the last hour or so, and command had really managed to fuck itself over this time. The LCACs had taken damage from the enemy artillery fire so that had to be repaired. Then, one of the M1A2 Abrams to lose a tread while loading into the LCAC, and then after that, a crew member had gotten stuck underneath the tank while trying to get the tread back on. It was just one big clusterfuck after another, and it was costing lives out there.

"Sir, the artillery fire can only hold off the UGVs for so long," Hitman 3-1 said to Gambit Actual. "We need to take the fight to these guys or else we're going to lose this beachhead again! Over."

"I understand Hitman 3-1, but the tanks are having some problems, over. We're getting more helicopter support from the _Bonhomme Richard_."

* * *

Mina was driving down the riverbed when a couple of Marine AH-1Zs flew overhead, their rotors thumping throughout the air. She cringed in her seat as they flew overhead; they were a good target, all exposed here in the riverbed.

"Juliet 4-1, we need you to do a pass by the beachhead, over."

That didn't sit well with the pilot. "Uh, Gambit Actual, we're running pretty close on fuel here, and we're almost out of ordnance, over."

"Do what you can Juliet 4-1, out."

Juliet 4-1 would have thrown his hands up in frustration, if he hadn't been piloting the helicopter at the time.

"Hey, look down there," the gunner said to Juliet 4-1. From what he could see, there was a dune buggy bouncing around, trying to suspiciously avoid them. Well, they looked suspicious enough for them to take the buggy out, and Juliet 4-1 made the call to shoot.

"How many 20 mike mike you got left?" he asked the gunner.

The gunner checked his instruments. "150 rounds."

"Rockets? Missiles?"

"That's a negative. We used them all off trying to get those UGVs off of that MSOR team back there."

"Dammit." Juliet 4-1 wanted to just blow the buggy up; a nice Hellfire missile would have easily done the job, but they didn't have any at the moment. In addition, they also carried two Sidewinder missiles, "just in case", which had turned into "oh shit, we need to actually use those today", moment when a UAV had tried to shoot them down. Needless to say, it was a miracle that a helicopter managed to kill an "aircraft" per se, even if it was a drone.

"Try to get a couple of bursts off. I don't want to waste any more ammo than we have to," Juliet 4-1 ordered.

"Roger that." The gunner simply looked at the buggy, which was on his left at this point. The cool thing about it was, that the gun itself was "slaved", or connected to the gunner. This meant that when he looked at something, the gun also pointed in that direction too. It made targeting a whole lot simpler, and was pretty cool to boot. The gunner fired two bursts, but missed due to Mina throwing the buggy all over the riverbed.

"I guess we got the President's answer," Raye said bitterly, swiveling the rear mounted M60 machine gun to face the Marine's Viper attack copter before Serena stopped her. The two bursts from the helicopter had made everyone jump a little bit and scrunch up in their seats, what little that would do for them.

"No, Raye. Just don't."

Raye swore, but she knew that Serena was right. Plus, that dinky M60 wasn't going to do anything against a heavily armored attack helicopter.

"Maybe they just didn't get the order yet…" Amy quietly said.

"Amy, don't be naïve," Raye shot back. "You're smarter than that."

That shut Amy up quick. She looked down at her computer, Raye's words echoing for a second in her mind.

"Don't be so harsh," Lita whispered to Raye. Raye glared at her, but she was right. She went back to her machine gun, watching that goddamned helicopter try to come around for another pass.

"Fuck, more of those Youma!" Mina announced, pointing in front of them. They were in a line formation, and were about to attack toward the coast. The Light Strike Vehicle was some 100 meters behind them, and was making enough of a scene for a couple of them to peel off from the formation to engage them.

"Okay, now Raye!" Serena yelled to her.

"With pleasure." As the buggy approached the formation, Raye opened up with the machine gun. A shell casing snapped up from the ejection port and hit her in the face. She felt a slight burning sensation, but she ignored it and continued firing, pumping round after round into the formation. Lita added to the fire, and in a couple of seconds, several UGVs had been destroyed.

"Turn it around!" Amy yelled out. "We can't do anything this way!"

"Alright." Mina turned the LSV around, skidding on the pebbles and sand. She quickly shifted gears, hit the accelerator again, and quickly sped back the way they came.

* * *

"I can get those guys with a cannon!" the gunner said to Juliet 4-1.

"No time!" was the response. "Those UGVs are attacking those Marines again!" Juliet 4-1 broke off the chase and moved the helicopter closer to support the Marines at the beachhead. The Viper gunner opened up at the formation of youma, which was coming into range. The cannon mounted underneath his seat spat out 20mm shells, ripping apart several youma.

"Keep it coming!" Hitman 3-1 shouted over the radio, seeing the UGVs being destroyed left and right. The Marines also cheered from their shallow foxholes, happy to see that something was at least going right today.

Juliet 4-1 swore at himself for having to let the dune buggy go, but it didn't really matter at this point. Anyone in their right mind would have to come to the conclusion that they were royally screwed and that they would just die tired if they continued to run.

* * *

"Serena, this isn't working out," Mina said to her after attempt after attempt to get to the coast was beaten back by the UGVs that were swarming the entire place. They had also dodged some naval gunfire, who rightfully assumed that they were enemy forces trying to escape from inside the fortress.

Amy was looking at her tablet computer; she noted that the battery was running low. She had been running that thing all day, and it was only natural that the battery would go out at this point. Oh well. "If we follow this road, "S-1", here, it'll take us further into the island, and we can perhaps find a place to hide out…" She put it up on their HUDs.

"What good will that do us?" Raye asked sarcastically. "There's no place to hide now, with spec ops and youma crawling all over the place."

"We can at least regroup and try to figure something out," Mina replied. "We're running desperately around, and we don't have all day to try to figure something out. Sooner or later, the United States and allied forces are going to completely control this island, and if we don't do something rational, we're going to get shot. Again."

"Fine," Serena said, her voice weary from making all of these decisions. "Just get us there."

Mina drove as fast as she cold toward the location, hoping that those helicopters didn't come back.

* * *

"This is Hitman 3-1, the UGVs are pulling back. Looks like we got them." From what he could see though, it wasn't that the UGVs were retreating; it looked like they were actually attacking in another direction. Where they were going, he was glad that they weren't attacking his Marines anymore.

"Thanks Juliet 4-1," Hitman 3-1 said over the radio to them.

"No problem. Out." Switching over to the _Bonhomme Richard_, Juliet 4-1 announced their status. "Gambit Actual, we are RTB, out."

**"**Affirmative Juliet 4-1. Out."

"I hope we can go after that buggy again," the gunner complained to Juliet 4-1.

He shook his head at that, as if the gunner could see him; the gunner was in the front seat while the pilot sat behind him. "Probably not. One of the other flyboys will probably get it. Oh well." Juliet 4-1 continued his flight out to sea, passing over the beachhead, which was obscured by a thick, dark smoke that billowed in the afternoon sky.


	80. Chapter LXXVIII: Resume Playback

**Chapter LXXVIII: Resume Playback.**

**1530hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Have to trust someone to be betrayed," Captain Price, Modern Warfare 2._

* * *

"Are you sure?" COMUSNAVCENT asked President over the secure line.

"Yes, that is my order," POTUS said to him, stoically, trying to be as unmoved as she could possibly be. It was hard giving orders like this, but she had to stand firm and resolute.

"Of course, Madame President." COMUSNAVCENT hung up the phone and looked at his J-2.

"That's…quite strange."

"What did the President want?" the J-2 asked him, poking at his tablet computer. He quickly exited out of a game of Angry Birds and got back to the task at hand.

"She wanted me to halt all offensive operations. No naval fire, no air support, no troop movements. Just…nothing."

"But we're so close!" the J-2 exclaimed. "We've gotten this far, now all that remains is to destroy all of those UGVs! Look!" He pointed to the digital monitors, which showed a huge group of youma gathering in the center part of the island. "We can end this!"

"Orders are orders. POTUS must know something we don't," COMUSNAVCENT replied wearily to his J-2. "At least we can take stock of what our losses are…"

The communications officers in the room started to recall the aircraft in flight, per the President's orders.

"All units, you are to cease operations immediately. All callsigns RTB for debriefing."

"_USS Vinson_, are you sure about that?"

"Affirmative Shark 4-2. Return to base immediately. Out."

* * *

"This looks like a good spot," Mina said to Serena. They were coming up on a small dried out riverbank, down a small path from the "S1" road. "We need to stop here, rest and get collected." The area at least looked somewhat defensible, with some high ground, rocky cover, and good lines of sight. It was better than nothing.

"Okay, that sounds good." Mina stopped the buggy where indicated, and the team piled out.

Serena breathed in, taking in the smell of dust, smoke and occasionally, the smell of death from the already decomposing bodies scattered across the island. She wondered how the hell she was going to get out of this situation.

"Raye, you're hit. Again," Amy said, hopping out of the jeep, looking up at Raye. She was climbing down from the machine gun.

"Fuck, you're right." Blood trickled down her right arm, staining her uniform as it did so.

"I think I'm out of healing solution, so all I can do is patch you up and give you some local anesthetic."

"Fine, just do what you need to do." Amy opened up one of the small first aid kits that she carried on her, first cleaning the wound, then applying a bandage.

"Hey, Mina, can you look in the buggy and see if you can find any more first aid kits?"

"Sure." Mina went back to their buggy and poked around in some of the few compartments that were in there.

Amy took a further look at Raye's injury. The round had apparently gone through and through, but that still didn't mean that it wasn't lethal without proper treatment. Amy then applied some anesthetic, injecting it from a syringe. Raye didn't even wince, the adrenaline still at work.

"There, should be good for awhile at least," Amy said to her. "Did you find anything in the buggy?" she yelled to Mina.

Mina shook her head, jumping down from the backseat. "Nah. Those soldiers must have taken everything with them. Sorry."

"That's okay," Amy said back to her. Mina walked over to her, squeezed her hand, and then went to stand on security.

Amy turned her attention to Lita, who was checking her machine gun near a couple of large rocks. She had set up the machine gun, pointing down the dry riverbed toward the highway. If any vehicle was going to come running through there, they were going to have to get through her first. "How's your arm?" she asked.

"It's…" Lita winced. The pain was getting to be a little much. She took another look at the arm; there was some more damage, no doubt caused by the strenuous amount of fighting that had occurred after the melee in Beryl's office.

"Here, take some." Amy handed her some painkillers. Passing out pills was not her first course of action, but like it or not, Lita needed some quick relief.

"I don't have a lot of water here," Lita said, looking at the lone canteen that she had brought with her. She unscrewed the cap and chugged the pills down, hoping it was enough to keep moving.

It wasn't a high priority on their list, but since the President had decided to betray them, every little bit of equipment that they hadn't brought was costing them. Including food and water.

Serena's stomach grumbled extremely loudly. All that work that she had done, and now the body needed calories to continue functioning.

Mina, having heard Serena's stomach, handed her an emergency ration bar that had 3600 calories in it. Normally, Serena would have avoided such things, but having nothing else, she took it from Mina and wolfed it down. It was gross, but it wasn't supposed to be caviar or something like that. Or doughnuts.

"Where did you get those?" Amy asked Mina, looking at the suspicious foil packets that she was passing out to the team.

"Back at the armory, where you got that P90 there," Mina replied, handing her one of the bars. "How's that gun treating you anyway?"

"Good, but I'm almost out of ammunition," Amy said, checking her tactical vest. There were only two magazines left for the P90, but at least there was plenty of ammunition left for her MP5-PDW.

Amy saw in the corner of her eye, Serena struggling to sit up wincing in pain from all that they had been through that day. She had gingerly placed the empty wrapper back into one of her pockets; Even far away in a foreign land, they still adhered to the Japanese form of cleanliness and proper etiquette. And plus, someone was probably going to have to clean up after all of this, so one less wrapper would be much appreciated.

"Take a rest, Serena," Amy said to her. "We can take it here for a little bit." Serena shook her head. She couldn't do that, not when they were in the middle of battle.

"Serena, take a nap," Lita insisted, from her position from behind the rocks. "We'll let you know if there's something going on, okay?"

Seeing that the rest of the team wanted her to rest up, she obliged them, propping her head up against one of the tires on the buggy. Within seconds, Serena Tsukino was asleep.

* * *

"Afternoon, Serena."

She opened her eyes to see Mamoru Chiba, her old boyfriend standing over her. He had a slight smile on his face, one that she remembered him having so long ago.

"Mamoru…it's nice to see you…" Serena said, but it was an indignant reply, one dripping with anger and bitterness. She stood up, taking in the scene around her. She was in the schoolyard of her high school, but it was devoid of students. Some more inspecting revealed that she was back in her sera fuku, the sailor uniform, and was sitting on a stone bench next to a tree. The sun was setting in the distance, casting long shadows over everything.

"It's Darien now," Mamoru/Darien said back, continuing to smile at her. The sun's rays managed to momentarily hit his white teeth, making them sparkle ever so briefly.

"Why did you change your name?" Serena interrogated.

He shrugged.

"I blame the Americans. Particularly the company I was working for." He sighed. "None of them could get my name right, so I kind of sort of changed it."

"To Darien?" That made no sense to Serena.

Darien shot back, pretending to be hurt by her words. "Hey, throw me a fucking bone here. I'm trying my best."

"Fine." Serena crossed her arms and glared at Darien, who was resting against a tree near the bench. "Why are you bugging me at a time like this?"

More shrugging.

"Is that all you do that now? Shrug? Is that something they taught you in America?"

The smile was slowly starting to fade away as Serena become more and more agitated. "Serena, look, this might seem odd…"

"Try me. In the last six months, I've been blown up, both of my legs torn off, hospitalized, outfitted with prosthetics, outfitted with microchips in my brain, killed god knows how many men in armed combat, betrayed by the most powerful nation in the world, and now you're here talking to me in a dream. Do your fucking worst."

Darien held up his hands now in actual defeat. "Hey, Serena, fine. Be that way. You were so much nicer when we were together…"

"Were we?" Serena spat back. "You tell me that! You went to America and left me all by myself! No explanation, no nothing!"

The smile was completely gone now. "Serena…"

"You just wanted a nice, young, naïve girl, someone who would look up to you, fawn over you, leap at every command…is that what you wanted?" Several tears welled up in her eyes, remembering the happy days gone past. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair! None of this was.

"So, kind of like how you got yourself into this situation then?" Darien replied to her.

"Don't." Serena held up her pointer finger and jabbed it in Mamoru's face. "This is entirely different. I don't remember killing anyone when we first slept together."

"Look, it really wasn't…"

The tears flowed down Serena's face now, remembering every single thing in graphic detail. "Mamoru, it's been so long since that day, alright? I keep losing bits and pieces of me when I think of you." She paused, looking down at the ground. This wasn't real at all, but it was just how she felt at the moment. "And these guys, this corporation, took everything I had left. So, I'm done with you. At least for now."

Mamoru/Darien looked down at his feet in shame. There was nothing he could do now; Serena had made up her mind, and that was that.

"I'm sorry it has to end this way, Serena," Mamoru said to her.

It was a long while before Serena said anything back to him. She watched as the sun finally set behind some buildings, then the horizon. The light slowly dimmed to a blackness as the rays from the sun faded away.

"Yeah," she said to him, finally. "Me too."

* * *

Serena woke up from her ever so brief catnap. It had been a spectacularly bad day it had seemed, full of running and fighting and destroying the youma that had ravaged the landscape around them. She didn't know how long she could hold them back. For hours, they had fought on. No support, no contact with the outside world, battling against ever-increasing odds. The worst part of it all, they had been abandoned. Serena took stock of their situation, looking at the SAILOR scouts…senshi…around her.

Jupiter and Mars were hurt, but could still keep on fighting. Venus and Mercury ran from position to position, trying to help SAILOR Moon prepare against seemingly unending waves of youma.

"Have you been able to contact anyone? Anyone at all?" SAILOR Moon asked Mercury, shaking her head, trying to get the memory of Darien out of her head. There would be more time to think on that later.

"I haven't been able to talk to the fleet out there," she replied. "I'm sorry."

"Goddammit," Serena cursed. "We're stuck here, trapped and running low on food and water, not to mention everything else we need."

"And we were so naive," Venus said, scanning the horizon for the enemy. "I can't believe that we were so blind."

"We all were," Mercury said. "I just wish…I just wish none of this happened." Amy sighed at the predicament they had found themselves in. She was so angry at what had happened. Why them?

"Don't mention it." Mars had limped over from her position near a well and brought over a canteen of brackish water. "It's our last full canteen. If we don't get support or something, we're going to…"

"I know, I know," Serena said. "Amy, did you try to get into contact with the fleet? Anybody friendly?"

"The youma have sealed off the entire area," she replied. "Nothing is getting in or out of this place."

"We have to keep moving, this position is not safe," Jupiter said. Her arm was in bad shape and she would be down to one good arm if she didn't get back to base soon. "We have to reach the sea, that's our only chance if we can contact someone…"

"Serena, they're coming," Venus reported. "At our twelve. I'm counting maybe three hundred. Maybe more." The huge dust trails from their movements clouded the horizon, an ominous signal of things to come.

"Okay, Amy, Venus, start packing up the stuff and get into the buggy over there," Serena ordered. "Raye and Lita will get into the…"

"More contacts!" Lita yelled out. "They're on the left."

"Oh Christ," Raye muttered. She crossed herself before realizing what she was doing. "All that Catholic schooling…"

"They're to the right!" Amy yelled.

There were now over one-thousand youma, readying themselves for an attack on five scared, young, and completely outclassed SAILOR scouts. Their survival prospects were very low at this point.

"What do you want us to do?" SAILOR Jupiter asked. "We can still make a break for it. Amy could signal those guys out at sea, and they could help…"

Serena looked out the barren landscape. Twenty kilometers to the sea. But it had taken them at least a good part of the day to cross twenty…and in their condition, they were in no shape to fight their way to the coast.

"We are so screwed."

"Oh, you're just now coming to that conclusion?" Raye snapped. "Thanks for pointing out the obvious. I came to that realization when were inside there."

"Can it, Raye," Mina said. "What do you want us to do, Serena? We'll follow you."

Serena looked at the huge dust trails that were kicked up by youma as they approached.

"I'm not going to die running," she said. "But at least some of us can make it. Mina, Amy, make a dash for the sea. Don't take the buggy, it'll make you a bigger target. Plus, it's not in good working order, after that last beating."

Mina and Amy stared at her in disbelief. "Serena, I'm not going to leave you," Mina said.

"Neither am I," Amy said as well.

"If we all die here, our story doesn't get told," Serena replied stoically. "You and Amy know the entire details of what went on here. Go. That's my final decision. Raye, Lita and I will hold as long as possible."

Mina and Amy looked at each other, but could not say anything else in objection.

"Good luck," Mina said to the rest of SAILOR them. She unslung her HK417 and handed it to Lita, giving her whatever ammunition she had left. They would need to be as light as possible, and that heavy battle rifle was only going to slow her down.

"You too," Lita said to her.

"Raye, Serena, Lita," Amy said to the three of them. Mina and Amy faced toward them, and then bowed deeply, showing their respect to the ones who were putting it all on the line so that maybe somebody, anyone, would listen to what had really happened here. They bowed back, reciprocating their respect.

Without further protest, Mina and Amy started running toward the ocean as fast as they could.

SAILOR Moon, Mars and Jupiter turned and prepared to fight one last battle.


	81. Chapter LXXIX: Live, love, lost

**Chapter LXXIX: Live, love, lost.**

**1700hrs, 26 December 2013, Socotra, Yemen.**

_"Let the world stop turning, let the sun stop burning, let them tell me love is not worth going through. If it all falls apart, I will know deep in my heart, the only dream that mattered had come true. In this life, I was loved by you." Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, In This Life._

_"You're brilliant in battlefields, show brilliance now/With permission I'm your bodyguard, shall I become king and usurp it?/Duty or love, it's the same to me/I've the prowess to serve of attack you my love/My life and soul is your take it, O mighty warrior." Dheera Dheera Dheera, from "Magadheera."_

* * *

Mina and Amy ran. They ran because their lives depended on it. They ran because they had no choice. The sounds of gunfire behind them signified that the final battle was beginning, and that Serena, Lita, and Raye were doing everything that they could to buy them time. Within eight minutes, they had covered a kilometer, and showed no signs of stopping anytime soon, their pace fuelled by their adrenaline (and emergency rations).

* * *

Lita opened up with the HK417 that Mina had left behind, at about 500 meters. She lined up a shot at an approaching youma…they all looked the same though. There were no leaders, just programming attributes that told the UGVs to attack whomever. She took the shot, killing the UGV.

She wondered why the naval guns weren't opening up, or why no planes were flying overhead to drop bombs on the very exposed targets.

* * *

"Sir, look!" A staff officer pointed at the monitor. "Gunfire, over by that riverbed."

That got everyone's attention quickly. "Get me USCINCSOC," COMUSNAVCENT said to the comm officer. It took a second, but they got Overlord on the line.

"Overlord, do you have any units in that region, over?" COMUSNAVCENT asked the general on the JSTARS aircraft.

"Uh…" Overlord hesitated for a moment. He knew it was the SAILOR team, trapped by the thousand or so youma. "Standby, Admiral, over."

"Ma'am, USCINCSOC, for you," COS said to the President. Sighing, she picked up the phone that her COS was holding. She could see the action on the screen in front of her, and it was not looking good for her in any regard.

"What can I do for you, General?"

"Madame President," Overlord asked over the secure line. "This thing is spiraling out of my control. I have COMUSNAVCENT asking me about a stranded group engaging about a thousand or so enemy UGVs, and they're going to start asking more and more questions unless we do something about them."

"What do you suggest?"

"I'm going to pass it off as a PMC unit that's under attack by their own machines. Make it somewhat ironic."

"Do it. Just make sure that they don't know any more about the SAILOR unit."

"Understood."

Overlord turned his attention back to COMUSNAVCENT. "General Williams here, Admiral," Overlord said very calmly, confident that he had a handle on the quickly degrading situation.

"Go ahead."

"Admiral, I have no units operating in that area. From what we can gather, they're leftover PMC units under attack their own UGVs. After their CIC was disabled, that must have sent them off."

That relieved COMUSNAVCENT. Now the President's order was making more sense. Better let their own machines kill the bastards, then mop up whatever mess they left behind.

"Understood General, thanks for the heads up."

"Who was that?" the J-2 asked.

"It was General Williams, the person in charge of SOCOM. He's up there in a JSTARS plane, keeping watch over the special operations units on the ground."

"What did he say about that unit?"

"It's not ours. Just that PMC got itself in over its head, and now being consumed fighting the creatures of its own making."

That brought a slight smile to the J-2's face.

"How very ironic, Admiral. Kind of like the Terminator."

"Oh very much so. I would prefer the story of King Diomedes, who was fed to his own man-eating mares by Heracles, but to each his own." He readjusted himself in his chair, trying to get comfortable after a long day of action. "I actually did see that movie when it first came out." COMUSNAVCENT sometimes reminded the rest of his staff that he was quite older than most of them.

"Of course sir, that one was a classic."

A staff officer looked up from his display. "Admiral, I have two members of that group splitting off and making a run toward the sea."

"They're not going to make it far," he casually observed.

* * *

Mina and Amy had covered another kilometer when a burst of machine gun fire rippled in front of them, sending up dirt and bits of rock into their faces.

"Amy, keep running!" Mina yelled to her, firing her shotgun from the hip at several approaching youma. She only managed to hit one of them, sending it careening over backward and out of the fight. The other youma fired their machines guns in reply, their bullets zipping past and impacting all around them.

"Dammit!" Mina cursed. They hadn't gotten very far, and now the youma were closing in on all sides. They just needed to keep moving, that's all.

"I got you covered!" Amy yelled to her, firing her P90 at an approaching youma.

Mina pushed herself up from the prone position and continued running, shoving in some more shotgun shells into her gun, then turning around and kneeling, firing off slug rounds at the UGVs. Amy ejected her magazine from the P90 and fished around for another one; it was the last one she had. Oh well. She fired the entire thing off at two distant youma, managing to at least wreck their treads up enough so they couldn't continue. It bought them some time at least.

The two of them leapfrogged across the plain, heading up some steep hills, continuing on their path toward the ocean.

Lita fired the HK417 again and again, hitting youma left and right. They just kept on coming, and at 300 meters they opened up with their own machine guns, their bullets zipping through the air and riddling their crude fortifications that they had built in the last hour or so.

"Motherfuckers!" Raye cursed. She had Lita's M249, and was firing indiscriminately by holding down the trigger and spraying bullets all over the place.

"Raye, you're not going to hit anything like that!" Lita said loudly to her. She was wasting fucking ammunition when they needed ever round to count.

"They're all together!" she yelled back. "Doesn't matter if I aim or not!"

"Just keep firing!" Serena said. "We have to buy Amy and Mina enough time!"

* * *

"Huh, they actually made it pretty far," COMUSNAVCENT commented, watching the battle continue on. The vast majority of the UGVs seemed to be homing in on the three of the soldiers, who were shooting at everything that moved, but a couple dozen had split off, and were engaging the two other soldiers. They were making a run for it, trying to get the coast, presumably to surrender. "I'm impressed, they're extremely determined. If they want help…maybe we'll give it to them."

"But POTUS said not to do anything."

"That was for offensive operations. In self-defense, now that's a whole different ball game. Plus, they're not covered by the Geneva Convention, so we have no obligation to help them, whatsoever."

"You're not going to shoot them if they do surrender though, right?" That prospect made the J-2 very uncomfortable.

"We could, technically. They're 'unlawful combatants,' but I'm not that cruel. We'll just let them rot in Gitmo for the rest of their lives."

"Sounds good to me."

They kept watching the screen, and they saw the remaining soldiers on the ground fall, one by one.

* * *

The HK417 clicked empty. Lita checked for spare magazines; there were none.

"I'm out, I'm out!" she yelled.

"Get the spare machine gun in the buggy!" Serena yelled, firing her M4 CQB-R at an advancing youma. It went down, tumbling town a small mound with the rest of the UGVs that had been destroyed beforehand. They still kept coming. Five more UGVs scrambled up in its place before being destroyed by a long burst of fire from Raye.

Raye, from a small mound, was firing Lita's machine gun as fast as she could. In the back of Raye's mind, she remembered a prayer that the nuns at the school had taught her. She hadn't really thought of it until now, but its words resounded in her head as loud as the machine gun she was firing.

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."

The machine gun clicked empty. Raye reached for another magazine, switching out the empty one for the last one that she had. She depressed the trigger and continued firing into the massive hoard of mechanical beasts besieging their position. She made sure that every burst counted, every round that she fired would find its mark. Spraying and praying didn't make much sense now when you were running low on ammunition.

"Where there is hatred, let me sow love."

Lita ran over to where the other machine gun was, in the back of the buggy. She wrenched it out with her hands, ignoring the screaming pain in her left arm. Quickly, she ran back to her position behind some rocks, and plopped the gun back down. She hated everything that had happened to them up to this point. The cowardly politicians, the idiotic corporate executives, the dumb-as-nails JSDF, and now the backstabbing Americans. And they were the causalities.

"Where there is injury, pardon."

The pain in her phantom arm screamed even greater now as the recoil from the machine gun rattled her whole body. The M60 fired a heavier round than the M249, but the results were more devastating. Youma after youma fell to her machine gun, sparking and billowing flame from their ruined carcasses. Bits of metal and wiring scattered the riverbed, analogous to the guts and flesh that would have been left behind if they were fighting humans.

"Where there is doubt, faith."

Panic momentarily hit Serena as she destroyed another youma trying to outflank their position. Two more rolled over a sandbar, only to be destroyed by a grenade she had tossed right after destroying that youma. Reassured that temporary crisis was over, she turned back to chopping down the waves of approaching UGVs to her front.

"Where there is despair, hope."

Out of the haze, Lita could see a small UAV drone hovering above. Maybe it was a leftover Nakanishi one, but she guessed that the US military was watching the entire scene unfold. Goddamn them. They were watching their inevitable fate, all from the comfort and safety of their boardrooms and bunkers, pointing at vague outlines on a map and condemning good men and women to death.

"Where there is darkness, light."

As the rays of sun slowly dipped beneath the horizon, Serena thought that the dream she had earlier was coming back to haunt her. How she missed those good old days, even if they were not good at all. Ejecting a magazine from her M4 CQB-R, she fumbled for a spare one. Three left. Better make them count. The long shadows of the setting sun slowly started to cover the battlefield in its murky opaqueness, leaving the combatants to soldier on.

"Where there is sadness, joy."

Lita smiled bitterly at their situation. It was so far removed from when they woke up in the "top secret" medical facility some six months earlier, when they were promised many things, things that would never materialize or come to pass. Like all other things, like all of the promises made, they would disappear into the ground, trampled into dust by the stampede of youma slowly making their way toward them.

"O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;"

"I'm not going to make it!" Raye shouted over the din of battle. She fired her grenade launcher rapidly, expending all six chambers in a matter of seconds. A group of tightly packed youma blew up in a spectacular fashion, sending their parts everywhere and cooking off the ammunition they stored inside of their metal shells. Raye looked for more grenades; there were none left.

"We will persevere!" Serena yelled back, over the radio. "We will make it!"

Thanks Serena, Raye thought to herself, knowing the blatant lies in Serena's words. But unlike the U.S President or the Japanese PM, it was not a lie of malintent, but a lie to instill hope and courage in a situation rapidly turning against them, if not completely against them already. Raye dropped the MGL and got back to her machine gun.

"To be understood, as to understand;"

Serena knew that this was going to be it for them, despite what she had just said earlier. She had hoped that no matter the chances, they would at least make it out on top, prevailing against all the odds. At least they could have the comfort of hope, betraying them in their last moments as the youma swamped over their position, with the US military and their allies standing around, doing nothing. At least this last stand would go down in the history books…oh wait, they didn't exist, so it wouldn't even get the luxury of a footnote. Serena ducked behind some rocks and drew her sidearm, what little it would do against those UGVs.

"To be loved, as to love."

Raye felt several bullets hit her right arm. There was no pain, just the inability to move said arm.

She could see the blood start to pool underneath her body, the dark red fluid staining the ground as it leaked from her body. Lita saw her go down, and dropped whatever she was doing to see if Raye could be helped. Bullets snapped around her heels and whistled through the air, but she kept running. Lita slid next to her, and grabbed her hand.

"For it is in giving that we receive."

Raye handed Lita her last magazine from her M16A4. Her machine gun could take those magazines, what little it would do her now. Lita didn't even have time to look down at Raye's crumpled and bloody body, not even time to mutter a quick goodbye. Yeah, Raye could be an ass at times…well, almost all the time, but that wasn't the point now. Raye was going to die…and for what reason? Because it was politically expedient? Because it was their turn in life? Because they had drawn a bad deck of cards? That was bullshit. Lita picked up her machine gun and ran back to her original position. She continued to fire the machine gun until the magazine was expended.

"It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,"

A youma got a lucky shot off on Lita. A 40mm grenade detonated right behind her, riddling her back with shrapnel. She screamed out in pain, but continued to pull the trigger with her good hand. Another grenade, and then another grenade exploded next to her, sending her flying into a small ditch.

She thought of all the times that she had been a complete ass herself, only looking out for number one, pouting in corners, beating up the losers at school, bitching about how she was never going to get her own uniform…yeah, that paled in comparison to what was going on now. It was time to make peace with herself. In a last gesture of defiance, she took out her Mk23 and fired it again and again at the youma that approached her, firing their machine guns wildly. A youma somehow went down before Lita succumbed to a hail of bullets that quickly put an end to her life.

"And it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life."

Serena was firing her sidearm at an approaching youma, no more than twenty meters away when she felt the bullets hit her. They penetrated her armor, through her often-repaired organs and flesh, through her now weak and frail body, worn down by almost two weeks of fighting. There was no amount of healing solution that could repair that sort of damage. Serena slowly tumbled through the air, seeing the dark haze of the battle stream over them.

"Amen."

Serena lay down on the ground, her blood spilling out on the hard ground, never to stand up again. All that she had been though, all the sacrifices that she had made, for country, for her friends, for her freedom…all for naught. As she closed her eyes for the final time, she thought of the good times and bad, the tears, the laughter, the hope and joy she had felt with her friends. Finally, poor Darien flashed through her mind, one last time. She died with a small smile on her face.

Raye felt the life slowly draining from her, and the prayer ended in her mind. She thought that she would be going to join her grandfather now. It would be alright now. The long nightmare was over.

* * *

"Goddammit, can anyone hear me?!" Mina screamed into her radio. She fired several more rounds from her Glock 26 before it clicked empty. She reached for a magazine, and realized that it was her last one.

"Last mag!" she yelled to Amy, who was trying to boost the signal in any way, shape or form so that maybe somebody could rescue them…they were desperate. Even if the President had given orders for them to be terminated, they would have been easily shelled or bombed by the fleet or their planes. But that hadn't happened. So someone perhaps had a heart after all.

They were trapped in a small gulley, with the sea to their backs, and a couple of dozen youma advancing to their left, right and center.

"Grenade out!" Amy said, tossing a frag grenade from her tactical vest to some UGVs on her right. The small explosion disrupted the automated formation, and managed to kill several of them. But more just took their place. Amy threw another grenade on her vest before realizing that it was her last one. She ducked back behind a large rock to try to communicate with anyone…someone.

"This is…this is…" Amy faltered for a moment. They had no formal callsigns, besides the now extremely stupidly sounding "SAILOR Mercury" and "SAILOR Venus." Goddammit, why did she have to come up with those names away? "We need some help! Please, for god's sake, we need some assistance! We're under fire by dozens of enemy UGVs, and we will die if someone doesn't come and help us!"

Amy swung around to fire a couple more rounds from her MP5-PDW. She fired a long burst at a youma, but the small caliber bullets were largely ineffective.

"Somebody please help us!" was her last words into the radio.

Several rounds from a UGV snapped into her right shoulder. Amy cried out before several more riddled her chest, penetrating the body armor she was wearing. She fell to the ground.

Mina looked over at the sound of Amy's cry, and saw her friend and lover falling toward the ground.

* * *

"Amy?! Amy!" Mina screamed. "No!"

She forgot that she was transmitting over the radio.

* * *

Aboard the USS _Carl Vinson_, Mina's frantic babbling finally got through. One of the radio operators picked it up and was horrified to hear a screaming girl on the other side, pleading for help.

"Sir, we're getting something from the island, it's being broadcasted in the clear."

"Put it up."

"Somebody, please help us!" was the radio message. There was some more incoherent babbling before a recognizable message got through.

"No…Amy…please…don't die…don't die…" It was a voice of a girl. That shut up almost everyone instantly.

"Where is that coming from?" COMUSNAVCENT asked the radio operator.

The operator triangulated the signal. "It's those two people that we saw running off."

"Oh sweet Jesus." COMUSNAVCENT felt a pang of guilt. Maybe he had been too quick to judge. It certainly reminded him of his family back home.

"Amy…please…no…" The UAV feed showed the girl cradling the body in her arms, sobbing. The CIC became very quiet, just like when the missiles had been first fired from the island. But this was different. This was the other side of humanity. This was the side of people that military men and women tried to push away, because it would affect their job performance and their duty. That was not a bad thing. But this was too much. After seeing days of piled up bodies on the TV screen, with thousands killed in the United States alone following the terrorist attacks, and their brethren mercilessly attack slaughtered in the first engagement, and now their entire battle…no…no, this was the breaking point. There was no rhyme or reason to this. Who were they? They didn't care. All they saw was a broken woman…no, a child. Someone who was scared. Someone who was frightened out of their mind.

Was it a trap? Perhaps. But there was something else in the fleet that day, in the CIC of the _Carl Vinson,_ the _Harry Truman_, the _John C Stennis_, the destroyers, the cruisers, the amphibious ships, the fighter planes, the AWACS, the JSTARS aircraft…there was a spirit there, that said "No." "This will not happen ever again." "We will protect the innocent, and destroy the injustice in the world today."

The President was back in the conference room, looking at the entire drama unfold. This was bad. Very, very, very bad. The other three members of the team were done for, having been killed off by a barrage of bullets and grenades by those UGVs, but these two would not die.

"Madame President, it's the Admiral of the fleet. He asking if he should send in rescue teams."

President Hamilton put her head between both of her hands. Shit, shit, shit. Her control of the operation was slowly starting to slip away from her grasp, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"Put him on, I want to talk to him directly." The COS gave her the phone receiver.

* * *

In the CIC of the _Carl Vinson_, POTUS made herself clear.

"This is the President, do not attempt rescue operations," she said in a tired, but stern voice. It had also been put up on the speakers as well. This was damned important information after all.

"Confirm that," COMUSNAVCENT said to his J-2.  
"Madame President, please confirm that you do not want us to start rescue operations," the J-2 said back to POTUS over the secure phone line.

President Hamilton closed her eyes and breathed in…and out. Must not lose temper, she thought to herself. "Yes, that is correct."

Everyone was looking at the screen, with the two girls on the ground, one of them cradling the one in her arms, sobbing and babbling incoherently into the radio as the remaining UGVs advanced in for the kill. The silence in the CIC was deafening.

COMUSNAVCENT motioned for the J-2 to give him the phone receiver. He did so, handing it over to the Admiral.

"Are you absolutely sure?" COMUSNAVCENT asked the President.

"Admiral, are you questioning my orders?" POTUS said to him, her voice rising a little bit. "You are not to rescue that group down there, whatever you do."

"Madame President…" COMUSNAVCENT started to say, but was cut off by the President.

"Goddammit Admiral, are you questioning orders from your commanding officer?" It might not seem much, considering the amount of swearing that had been going on today, but for the President to berate an officer like that…well…that wasn't a good sign.

"Absolutely not, Madame President, just making sure, that's all." It was official; the President had just lost her mind there. She wasn't telling them something about the situation on the island. Fine. They would just have to rescue these two girls then.

"Get a rescue section in the air. Helicopter escort and everything. Don't we have an AC-130 patrolling around somewhere?"

The J-2 nodded in response. "I'll ask the Air Force about that."

"Make it quick. It looks like their position is going to be overrun."

POTUS heard all of that. She was turning red, trying to keep all of her anger in check. "Admiral, what are you doing?" she hissed into the receiver. "I gave you a direct order to…"

The comm officer in the CIC terminated the conversation with POTUS.

"Looks like we lost her," he sarcastically said. "Must be some atmospheric interference."

"Of course," COMUSNAVCENT agreed stoically. "Must have been that."

On the flight deck of the _Carl Vinson,_ several SH-60s powered up and started their takeoff procedure, along AH-1Z Vipers, who were going to provide one last CAS mission.

* * *

"Dragon 1-1, flash message, over." The AWACS plane had just received new orders from COMUSNAVCENT for a support operation on the island.

"This is Dragon 1-1, receiving, over."

"We're directing to a CAS mission on the south side of the island, break. Civilians or noncoms, probable Nakanishi employees are trapped and are under attack by UGVs, break. Danger close fire mission. We'll send you the coordinates, over."

"Understood AWACS. Out."

The AC-130U received the coordinates from AWACS, and banked to the left in order to reach the AO.

"Ready to fuck some shit up?!" the pilot yelled back to the rest of the crew.

"Hell yeah," the Fire Control Officer replied.

"Tell me about it," the TV operator added. "This'll make Western Russia look like a friggin' cakewalk."

In the main body of the AC-130U, gunners loaded the 105mm cannon, prepped the 40mm Bofors cannon and the 25mm Gatling cannon. The 105mm M102 howitzer was (obviously), originally used by the US Army during Vietnam and thereafter, and was lightweight enough to be carried by a helicopter. The more compact design made it perfect for the AC-130 gunship, which improved on the previous incarnations, the AC-47 and AC-119. Those planes, while extremely effective in suppressing infantry and light vehicles, was not so great in destroying tanks or other heavy materiel due to them only having machine guns or Gatling guns on their planes. The answer then became, "Let's stick a howitzer on a cargo plane and see how that works." And it worked splendidly, for all intents and purposes. The autocannon, the 40mm Bofors, had even a longer history than the M102 howitzer, dating back to the Second World War. It was ironically a popular anti-aircraft weapon, effective against low to medium flying aircraft, and its large caliber made it good against infantry as well. Fast firing and accurate, the USAF had tried to replace it with something more modern, the 30mm Bushmaster cannon, but those had failed several tests, shelving that project. The Bofors stayed.

Finally, the blistering fire of the General Dynamics GAU-12/U Equalizer25mm Gatling cannon was used on soft targets, firing about 4000 rounds a minute to blanket entire city blocks with their shells. Only one was on the AC-130U, and one was enough. The original AC-47 carried ten .50 M2 Brownings or three 7.62mm M134 miniguns (not unlike the one that Mina had used during their escapades in Virginia), but again, those guns were not as effective against armor. This one gun was probably more effective than all of them put together, and when fired in conjunction with everything else…well, there wasn't anything left.

"Alright…let's see what's up…holy shit!" The TV operator couldn't believe what he was seeing down there. "Enemy…what are those again?"

The gunnery chief sent a quick message to the AWACS. "AWACS, advise, we're seeing lots of…it looks like robots, over."

"Dragon 1-1, those are enemy Unmanned Ground Vehicles, break. Consider those hostile and to be destroyed, over." Overlord had sent some data to the AWACS aircraft about an hour earlier when the special operations units had first encountered them.

"Roger that. Let's go to work y'all!"

The TV operator took a good look at the target rich environment in front of him. He selected the most juicy looking target, a group of about twenty UGVs, all clustered together. Their automatic programming bunched them together, and they were homing in for the kill on the vulnerable civilians. Not today, you fuckers, the operator thought. Even if they were Nakanishi employees, there had been enough killing for one day. Time to end this.

"Target the large group of UGVs about one hundred meters away from the personnel," he said over the radio.

"Fire the 105," the gunnery officer instructed.

The operator logged the location, distance, time to target, wind speed, aircraft speed, terrain, and a host of other factors to get the 105mm round as close as possible to the target. "Fire!"

"Away!" The gunner depressed the firing mechanism and a 105mm shell flew the kilometer or so distance to the target. A shell was ejected from the breech of the gun, and as quick as they could, another 105mm shell was rammed into the gun.

"Gun ready!" the gunnery team in the back of the hold reported to the operator.

"Firing!"

"Away!" Another round zipped through the air and exploded another formation of youma, taking them all out.

* * *

Mina was oblivious to all of this, with the crashing of artillery shells, the thump-thump-thump of the Bofors, or the ripping of the Gatling cannons; all she could focus on right now was the dying Amy in her arms.

"Amy…can you hear me?"

Somehow, through all that gunfire and explosions, Amy opened up her eyes to see Mina's face over hers'.

"I can hear you," she slowly said, conserving the last of her strength.

Amy smiled weakly at Mina, her small voice trembling with the pain and agony she was fighting back. "I'm sorry that it had to end this way," Amy whispered to Mina. Tears rolled down both their cheeks.

"Amy…I love you," Mina replied to her, caressing her blue hair as the sound of the AC-130U filled the air, coming back for another attack run.

There was a pause as Mina and Amy tried to savor their last moments here on Earth. The ground was rocked by another explosion as a 105mm shell detonated nearby. It was followed by several smaller explosions as the Bofors thumped away.

Amy blinked away the tears for a second, trying to make light of the situation. "Mina…Mina…I'm sorry," she quietly said, in her timid voice that made her sometimes unintelligible sometimes. But Mina could hear her loud and clear on this day.

Mina hugged Amy tightly, burying her head into her right shoulder, ignoring the blood that was coming out from the wound there. "Don't be sorry Amy. You have nothing to be sorry for."

Amy slowly shook her head, in a way that it almost felt like she was nuzzling Mina. "No, Mina. It's something…something that I've been meaning…"

"Shh…shh…" Mina continued to stroke Amy's hair in the last moments in her life.

"Mina…I…"

Mina stopped stroking Amy's hair and looked at the face of her lover.

"What is it?"

There was pause that seemed like it lasted for ten thousand years. Amy finally confessed to what had been eating away at her heart for all this time.

"It wasn't going to work out."

Those words made Mina's heart stop.

"Amy…what?"  
Amy could see Mina's soul shatter into a thousand pieces. But she couldn't leave her without knowing the truth. It was that mind versus heart thing again; Amy thought that by telling the truth, in a logical fashion, that she could at least leave Mina with a sense of what she felt after all this time.

"I'm sorry. It wasn't going to work out between us. It...it just wasn't."

Mina couldn't stop staring at Amy.

No…no…no…no…no, no, no, no, no, no no no no no no!

It wasn't supposed to end like this! Why?

"Amy, what do you mean?" Mina shook her firmly. "What do you mean by that?"

"I'm truly sorry Mina. I am."

The light faded from her eyes, and the last bit of strength left her. She went limp in Mina's arms.

Mina would have screamed out, anything, something. Nothing came out of her mouth though. All she could do was stare mutely at the limp body of Amy in her arms. She wanted to die, it hurt so much.

* * *

In the AC-130, they could see that their work was done here. The remains of about one-hundred youma littered the ground, no thanks in part to the massive firepower that was onboard the gunship.

"This is Dragon 1-1 to AWACS," the pilot said over the radio. "All hostile targets have been suppressed, the AO is clear, over."

AWACS seemed pleased by that statement. "Roger that Dragon 1-1. RTB, out."

"That was amazing," the TV operator said to his crewmates.

"So beautiful man," one of the gunners replied. "Much better fucking things up in real life than on a video game."

"Heh." The TV operator thought that this was probably one of the better missions he had been on, and they were certainly going to get a kick out of the combat footage back at base.

Dragon 1-1 banked left and continued on its flight path to base.


	82. Chapter LXXX: Aftermath

**Chapter LXXX: Aftermath**

**1745hrs, 26 December 2013, Yemen.**

_"If in truth unto my husband I have proved a faithful wife, Mother Earth, relive thy Sita from the burden of life! Then the earth was rent and parted, and a golden throne arose, held aloft by jeweled Nagas as the leaves enfold the rose. And the Mother in embraces held her spotless sinless Child, Saintly Janak's saintly daughter, pure and true and undefiled. Gods and men proclaim her virtue! But fair Sita is no more, Lone is Rama's loveless bosom and his days of bliss are over!" Uttara Kanda, Ramayana._

* * *

Kathie Hanson was walking on the docks, wondering if the battle would really change anything. Those corporations were in charge of everything nowadays, and by herself, she could not do anything. Then again, that's why she was here, dammit. Doing good, and trying to make someone's life a little bit better at least.

A loud commotion at the docks brought her back to reality.

"Hey, come on, bring that boat over here!" a fisherman yelled out.

Blessed with the knowledge of Arabic, she saw a gaggle of fishermen near some boats, crowding around to help out or to merely see what was going on.

"How many did you get?" a fisherman said to his mate.

The other guy replied with great gusto. "Two of them! They look in bad shape."

"Do you think they'll make it?" the other one asked.

"Inshallah." That was the typical response in this part of the world if you didn't know something. It meant, "God willing," as in, "Is the bus late?" "Inshallah." "When will the movie start?" "Inshallah." "Will this person die after being pulled out of an aircraft wreck, severely injured and barely conscious?"

"Inshallah."

"Ugh…" One of them was a woman, with a desert flecktarn uniform. The other was a man, with the same outfit. They looked really fucked up, and it was clear that they needed medical attention right away.

"We need to take them to a hospital!" one of the fishermen said.

"I can take them!" Kathie spoke up. The fishermen turned a looked at this blonde-haired, blue-eyed, 165 centimeter tall woman in front of them speaking fluently in Arabic. Now that was an uncommon sight. Although she had become known to the community at large in this city, it still was…weird, seeing her boss around rough and tumble fishermen.

"You have a car?" one of the fishermen asked. Most people here didn't own a car. It was expensive, and someone could steal it or more importantly, the fuel inside of the tank.

"Yeah, I've got one. I'll bring it over here!"

Kathie ran over to where she had parked her white Hyundai Getz near the docks and brought it over to where the gaggle of fishermen were standing. Quickly, she got out of the car and opened up the two rear doors while another one of the fishermen opened up the passenger door.

"Careful now!" Kathie said to them as they hauled the poor woman, who was groaning in extreme pain. "Put her in the back seat," she ordered them. Most of the time, women didn't have much in the way of rights here, but Kathie was forceful enough and persistent in her endeavors that the locals had learned not to fuck with her. Any attempt at leering or groping was met with a flurry of foul and direct curses, shaming the perpetrator into scurrying off.

"Okay, thanks guys!" she yelled at the fishermen, who slammed the car doors shut. Kathie floored the accelerator, spinning the wheels a little bit before finally shooting off onto the main road.

"Nearest hospital…that might be Ibn Sina Hospital. Better get on that," she muttered, looking at the poor woman next to her. The nametag on her uniform said "Kitsune"…wasn't that a Japanese name? Kathie didn't have much time to worry about that, as she was busy dodging traffic, trying to save these two from death.

* * *

The President, after witnessing the entire battle go down and having her orders ignored by COMUSNAVCENT, was in a foul mood. So when the idea hit her, she contacted USCINCSOC immediately, hoping that at least someone in the chain of command would respect her. So far, at least one general had his head screwed on straight.

"Overlord, I want those bodies and I want them yesterday, do you understand?" she said into the phone receiver. If nothing else, they could be used for some more research. Perhaps something good would come out of this clusterfuck.

"Uh…"

"General…" she growled into the phone.

That made up Overlord's mind real quick. "Of course. Right away Madame President."

* * *

"Red troop, you know your objectives?" one of the brigadiers aboard the HMS Ocean said to the SAS team on the ground.

Meanwhile the SAS team had been inserted a couple of minutes earlier via helicopter, and were making their way toward the last stand of the SAILOR team.

"That's affirmative," Daimler said over the radio. If the President was going drag the UK PM down, he'd better get something out of this entire mess. The death of the SAILOR team was not only watched by the US President, but other nations had their own methods of watching the battle. And the PM Robinson knew exactly what had to be done. "Retrieve three bodies, should be easy to pick out next to all of the destroyed…UGVs, over."

"Roger that Red troop. Blue troop, secure the server room and await further instructions, out."

Daimler, Jordan and Baker started walking the kilometer or so distance to the SAILOR team, picking their way through the shattered husks of the youma.

"I have never seen this many destroyed robot…thingies since I watched Attack of the Clones," Jordan complained, looking at the mountains of destroyed UGVs. There would be enough recovered materials to build several dozen tanks, helicopters, and planes in the coming months. But it wasn't their job to clean up that mess; they were coming here to fix another.

Baker was not happy with the popular culture references. "Jordan, if you make one more fucking Star Trek reference…"

That made Jordan extremely upset. "It is not ruddy Star Trek! It's Star WARS! A big fucking difference."

The other SAS operative still was confused. "They both take place in space, right?"

"It's not that simple!" Jordan shot back. "And plus, those three prequels were not as good as…"

"You two, knock it off!" Daimler hissed at both of them. "Or else I'm going to put a bullet in each one of you!"

That shut the two SAS operatives up.

"Where is this thing again?" Jordan asked Daimler, shifting his C8 rifle around, a Canadian produced/modified version of the M16.

Daimler shrugged at his question. "Um…Baker has the map, take a look at it."

Daimler was clearly getting back at the other two for being so off topic when they were supposed to be watching out for those robot…things. Baker glared at Red Troop leader, but there was nothing he could do except get out the map and match it to their mission objectives.

"Location is at the following," Baker said, in a mocking tone. "39, Papa Yankee Papa, 917790."

It wouldn't do much good if Baker wasn't showing the map to Daimler. "Well gee, thanks very much for that," Daimler said to him, returning the mocking tone. "Now point it out on the map for me."  
"No need. It's right there." Baker pointed at a buggy sitting near some rocks, surrounded by even more destroyed UGVs. Irritated that they wasted several moments on petty squabbles, Daimler made Baker put the map away and get out a set of binoculars to survey the damage.

"Jesus," Jordan said, looking at the devastation before them. "What the hell happened here?"

"Whatever it was, we should be quick about finding those bodies," Daimler snapped to the two other SAS operatives. "Quickly now."

The three of them sprinted across the plain, to the riverbed, over destroyed UGVs, and finally arrived at the buggy in less than two minutes.

"Not too bad," Daimler commented to the other soldiers. He was extremely fit, just like anyone in the UK Special Forces, but even more so than the usual SAS operative; he had successfully completed three triathlons and swam half the English Channel before bad weather forced an abort. And that was just for fun, let alone for his real job. "Think you can do that back home when we train the new guys?"  
"Shut the fuck up," Jordan gasped back to him. "So, we're looking for three bodies?"

"Yep. Should be easy, seeing that they were the only ones that were human in this last battle," Daimler noted. The three of them started looking around, but it was slow going trying to sort through the UGV carcasses. A few minutes passed before Daimler and Baker were called over to Jordan's position, a small mound in the center of the dry riverbed. Hundreds of shell casings lay scattered about, along with a MGL with no grenades, and an M16A4 with a shotgun attachment. Whoever had died here, went down fighting like a true soldier. He could also see the vague outline of another soldier, pinned underneath a destroyed UGV near a small mound, and further up the riverbed, the faint outline of a blonde soldier near some rocks.

"Hey, I found one." Jordan was standing over a body of…a girl?

Daimler knelt down and took a closer look. The girl had long jet black hair and slightly slanted eyes, making her one of those oriental people he occasionally saw when he was on leave in London. "Is this what command wanted?" he muttered to himself, wondering how the hell this situation came about.

He didn't have much time to think about it though.

"Oh shit, look, over there." Baker was looking toward the north, where the river lead to the road.

Daimler turned around to see what looked like soldiers coming up the riverbed.

"Fuck." The Americans, more than likely, and they were going to be asking questions about where one of the bodies went.

Thinking fast, Daimler sprang into action.

"Jordan, Baker, take the body and prop it up against that rock over there," he ordered, pointing to a particularly large rock on the bank of the riverbed. "Pretend like you're treating…her?"

"It's a her," Baker said back. He'd checked.

"From now until we get extraction, she's an SAS operative. Do you understand?"

"Got it, guv."  
"Don't fucking call me guv, I work for a fucking living," Daimler cursed at Baker, but they were already moving the body to the rock, propping Raye against it.

Seconds later, the Americans came running up to them, weapons drawn.

"US Marines!" one of them called out. "Drop your weapons!"

"Hey, hey, relax cowboys," Daimler said to them, raising his hands in the air. "We're SAS."

There were now about eight or so soldiers…no, marines, surrounding him now, their fingers itchy on their triggers.

"SAS? I wasn't told that there were any SAS teams in this area," the team leader said, looking suspiciously at Daimler. He got on his radio to ask for confirmation.

"Overlord, this is Charlie 4-2, we've run into what seems like an SAS team at our objective point. Confirm that SAS is operating in this area, over."

"Standby, Charlie 4-2."

Since the UK Special Forces obviously didn't fall under USSOCOM, and since this was a multinational operation, trying to sort out all the operations plans and units was going to be a clusterfuck unto itself. Mistakes would happen, people would get lost, and so on and so forth. Overlord contacted his Ministry of Defence contact, who told him that SAS were operating in that area, since manpower had been severely depleted by the destruction of the two Marine companies. Overlord didn't buy it at all, but that was the official explanation.

"Charlie 4-2, SAS units are supposed to be operating in this area, but not at this moment," Overlord reported back. If he thought what those SAS units were doing, then he'd better get them out of there ASAP. "Escort them out of the AO, out."

"Roger that," Charlie 4-2 said. "Out."

"You see? We just got…a bit lost. Sorry about that," Daimler politely said to the marines.

"Yeah, uh-huh," Charlie 4-2 distractedly said to him. "We're going to have to ask you to leave this area. Please."

It was a ballsy move on the Marine's part. Asking one of the most elite and experienced special forces units in the world to back off was incredibly brave, incredibly stupid, or both.

Oh well, Daimler thought to himself. Better one than none.

"Fine, we're leaving." Daimler turned to leave, when Charlie 4-2 noted something.

"Who's that over there?" Charlie 4-2 asked, looking over Daimler's shoulder at gaggle of SAS troopers by a large rock.

"We suffered a casualty from those…robot things," Daimler quickly replied. "We're just prepping him for extraction."

"Extraction? I thought you were patrolling this area."

"Well, you know, things change," Daimler said.

Charlie 4-2 furrowed his eyebrow at that excuse. "Do you need any help? My medic can…"

Daimler quickly shook his head. "No, no, we're fine. Nothing against your medic, but he's needs proper medical attention, okay?"

Charlie 4-2 nodded. His response was briefly drowned out by an AH-1Z flying overhead, but he repeated himself so that Daimler could hear him.

"I said, if you need any help, we're here."

Red troop leader simply just nodded his head in acknowledgement, and Charlie 4-2 went back to looking for more bodies.

"This is Red Troop," Daimler said over the radio to command. "Extraction for four, over."

Command was not happy about that. "Four? You're supposed to bring six…"

"I said, extraction for four," Daimler hissed into the receiver.

Command got the hint. Oh well, something was better than nothing at least. "Roger that Red Troop, the bird is on its way. Standby for extraction, out."

Daimler put his radio away and watched the marines sift through the wreckage of the battle.

"Did you happen to find any dead bodies, by chance?" Charlie 4-2 asked him, poking at a chunk of fused metal, presumably caused by a grenade explosion.

Shit. Daimler thought his options through. He could not give away the location of the other body in the ditch, but risking losing what they had, and giving the body away and releasing any suspicion on their part. He chose the latter.

"Yeah, I saw a body in that mound over there, with a pistol in hand." Daimler pointed out the body, some twenty meters away from them. A destroyed youma lay nearby the small mound, almost covering up but upon closer inspection, the marines found a long lock of brown hair sticking out of the debris.

"Thanks!" Charlie 4-2 waved some of his marines over to that location, and they were soon preoccupied in getting the destroyed UGV off of the dead soldier.

Daimler's radio crackled to life. "Red Troop, this is Bravo 2-0, ETA one minute," the helicopter pilot announced.

And just in time too, he thought to himself. "Thanks Bravo 2-0, we're going to pop green smoke."

"Looking for the green smoke, roger."

Daimler put the radio away and yelled at one of his troops to mark a LZ. "Baker! Pop green smoke!"

"On it!" Baker went over to a suitable piece of land about fifty meters away and unhooked a smoke grenade from his tactical vest.

"Always liked the green stuff," he muttered to himself. Baker pulled the pin and set the smoke grenade on the ground, running back to where both Jordan and Daimler where carrying their "fallen comrade".

"Bullshit, they should know that we don't go back for injured comrades," Jordan said to Daimler as they safely climbed aboard, hefting the body onto the floor of the Merlin helicopter. Daimler slammed the door shut, and they safely took off, leaving the Marines down there to deal with that entire mess.

"What are they going to do with her?" Baker asked Red Troop leader, looking at the body of the young girl sprawled out on the floor.

"I have no fucking clue," was the reply from Daimler. "Not my problem anymore. So stop worrying about it."

The helicopter flew back to the HMS _Ocean_, where the SAS team was offloaded and went for a pint in the canteen. Raye was put on dry ice, loaded into a body bag, covered with more dry ice, then put into a sealed container that would be transported by helicopter to the nearest airport, then by plane back to the United Kingdom.

* * *

"Juliet 4-1, provide cover for India 6-7 while they make their approach to rescue the civilians, over," one of the staff officers said to the helicopters approaching Mina and Amy's position.

"Roger that," Juliet 4-1 said back. "Goddamn, look at all those destroyed UGVs." There were certainly a lot of them down, littering the landscape. Whoever was going to have to clean that up was going to have their job cut out for them.

"Glad we're in this helicopter then," the gunner said back to them. As they flew over the SAILOR team's last stand position, the gunner noticed something briefly.

"Hey, there's that buggy we were chasing after earlier." The gunner could see that were several soldiers standing in the general vicinity of the vehicle, apparently staring down each other. Whatever was going on there, he didn't want to know. All he had to do was cover for the rescue operation going on at the other end of the island. Don't know, don't care.

* * *

"Hey!" One of the crew chiefs in the SH-60 yelled out to the chalk of marines riding in the back. "We're approaching the drop point, get ready to secure those civvies."

"Got it, thanks." First Lieutenant John Thames was relatively new in the US Marine Corps, but had proven himself in a particularly nasty ambush in Helmand province, Afghanistan, on his first (and last) tour of that hellhole. His troops were actually with the Headquarters and Service Company, obviously not meant for frontline service, but with two companies KIA, they needed everyone that could shoot a weapon. Thankfully in the Marine Corps everyone was a rifleman, so that really wasn't much of a problem. Unless you weren't on the frontlines every day.

Lt. Thames thought that a nice speech to motivate the men would be appropriate for this occasion. He stood up in the cramped space, and made sure to grab onto something so that he didn't fall out of the helicopter.

"Alright guys, I know that this is completely different than what we've trained for, but these guys need our help, and we're going to give it to them!"

"Lieutenant…" A Staff Sergeant, Jackson Howard, who had also been involved in the Iraq War, shook his head at the Lt. "Save your speeches for another time."

"Oh." He still had a lot to learn in his time in the Marine Corps.

"Twenty seconds," the pilot announced.

"Get ready!" SSgt Howard yelled to the rest of the group. The sounds of weapons being loaded and checked resounded through the helicopter, only to be drowned out by the noise of the rotors.

"India 6-7, approaching the drop point in five…four…three…two…one…"

* * *

Mina was completely oblivious to the helicopters flying overhead. She just stared and stared at the lifeless body of Amy, her eyes blankly staring blankly back at her. How did it come to this? Why didn't Amy tell her that things were not working out between them? Why did she sleep with me? Why did…why did…

* * *

"Go go go!" The chalk poured out of the helicopter, fanning out around the landing zone. Several AH-1Zs hovered overhead, providing overwatch, while a flight of four F/A-18s screamed overhead. A couple of Harriers followed soon afterward, dropping some napalm off in the distance on one of the remaining groups of youma still patrolling the island.

Lt. Thames slowly approached the motionless girl in front of him. She was holding another person, looking down at her silent.

"Ma'am…ma'am?" he said, his M4 carbine pointed at her body, just in case. "We're here to help."

Mina ignored him and continued to stare at Amy's lifeless corpse. Lt. Thames cautiously advanced forward, approaching from her left side. He could see a multitude of spent brass around, which meant that…

"She's got a weapon!" he yelled out to the group. Instantly, his squad trained their guns on her, ready for anything. They might be clerks and accountants, but they were no slouches when it came to killing.

"Drop the weapon!" SSgt Howard repeated, pointing his own M4 carbine at the girl.

"Do it!"

Mina complied, setting her shotgun and sidearm aside, and then taking off Amy's MP5 and P90. The marines moved in and took the weapons away. She looked at Amy one last time before standing up and being escorted to the helicopter, carrying her body all the way there.

* * *

"Nice going there, India 6-7," Juliet 4-1 said to the helicopter taking off from the LZ. He saw a blonde woman carry what seemed like a body to the SH-60, while the rest of the Marines watched her carefully, making sure that she didn't try anything on them. They too got into the helicopter, preparing to leave this infernal place.

"Thanks Juliet 4-1. We're RTB." The SH-60 took off from the impromptu LZ, returning to the _Carl Vinson. _

"Looks like we are too, out." Juliet 4-1 took the AH-1Z back to the _Bonhomme Richard_ for some much needed rest and repair. It had been a long day for everyone involved, and the pilots were almost at their effective limit for flying time. Anything after this could probably result in accidents and more casualties, something that definitely wasn't needed after today's battle.

* * *

Luna finally remembered waking up in a strange hospital, with gibberish speaking doctors and nurses surrounding her, taking her vitals, poking her incessantly with needles and other things in areas that she wouldn't want to mention in good company.

So this is what the SAILOR team must have gone through, she thought to herself.

She turned her head to see…a blonde woman? What was she doing here? Behind her, she could see Artemis, much in the state that she was in.

"Ah…" Luna tried to speak, but nothing was coming out.

"Hey, take it easy there," the woman said to her. For a moment, she looked like Serena, but as she blinked away the crud in her eyes, she could see that it was not her.

"Who…who are you?" Luna finally found the strength to speak to her.

"I'm Kathie Hanson, of the NGO United World Relief Fund. Some fishermen dragged you out of the sea, barely alive."

"Oh…how did I get here then?"

"You speak pretty good English," Kathie noted, pleasantly surprised by that fact. "I drove you here, along with another guy."

"Another guy?"  
"Yeah, his name was Tanaka or something like that." She pointed at the guy behind her, the one that Luna had spied earlier.

She leaned back in her uncomfortable hospital bed and thought the situation through.

Why weren't they in a military hospital though? Why were they picked up by civilians? They were on a secret mission, but that didn't mean that they were going to be outright abandoned…right?

"Have you contacted the military officials here?" she asked Kathie.

"Not yet. I was going to, since you were wearing military uniforms and all."

She thought back to the plane…something about their escorts breaking off. Beryl was in there too, in a radio transmission, saying how…wait as second. Beryl. F-15 escorts. Flash of light. Explosion. Luna came to a conclusion real fast about what had happened.

"Wait, don't."

"Don't?" Kathie looked at her, confused.

"Don't tell anyone we're here, alright? Our mission was extremely secret and we can't let anyone know we're here. Especially in this hospital."

"Oh really now?" Kathie crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. "Why should I?"

"Because you'll probably end up dead," Luna said stoically.

That made her raise an eyebrow, but it didn't worry her too much.

"Look, I get death threats around here all the time, so I'm not too concerned that…"

"Listen!" Luna snapped at her. "If you tell anyone, and I mean ANYONE knows if we're alive here, then there's going to be a shitload of US soldiers banging down the door of this place and killing everyone in it!"

Kathie's phone starting ringing, interrupting Luna's outburst. "Give me a second, okay?" She looked at who was calling; it was the BBC reporter, probably looking for more leads.

"Amber here, you got anything?"

She looked at Luna for a second, then decided against it. "Nah, the fishermen came back. Nothing to be salvaged." The reporter would figure out that they had actually brought someone in, but Kathie though it might buy her some time anyway.

"That's a shame. Thanks anyway though. Keep in touch if you hear anything."

"Will do." Kathie terminated the call.

"Who was that?" Luna asked suspiciously.

"It was a reporter."

"Shit. That's the last thing we need." Luna tried to sit up, but having just survived a plane crash, the damage to her body was too great. She was in no condition to walk down the hall to the toilet, let alone evade and escape trained military personnel.

Kathie knew that she couldn't take the risk. The person laying on that bed there seemed to be extremely convincing, if blunt.

She looked inside her purse at the wad of money that the reporter had given her earlier today…well, better make it count.

"Fine. But you have to tell me what was going on at that island, okay?" Kathie stared Luna down, hoping to get something for her trouble.

"Yes, yes…just make sure no one finds us here."

Kathie stood up from her chair, wondering why the hell she was doing this, but at least she finally might get some answers out of this Japanese person. She walked down the hall, looking for the doctor in charge, who would walk away from his shift tonight a slightly richer man.


	83. Chapter LXXXI: Aftermath, Part II

**Chapter LXXXI: Aftermath, Part II**

**0900hrs, 26 December 2013, Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States.**

**_"_**_A day will come when they will weep and pray for your souls." General Kuribayashi, Letters from Iwo Jima._

_"Someday, this war is gonna end…" Colonel Kilgore, Apocalypse Now._

* * *

The President sat in her bunker, head in her hands. It was over, but at what price?

"Ma'am."

Elizabeth ignored the voice for a second and kept looking down. She had not killed anyone personally, but her hands were stained with blood, just as much as those Delta Force operators or even…even the SAILOR team.

"Ma'am."

POTUS finally stopped ignoring the voice and looked up. COS Ramirez was standing at the door to the conference room, holding his tablet computer and generally looking very concerned.

"Yeah, Jorge. What is it?" POTUS wiped the sleepiness and the emotions she was feeling aside.

The COS tapped a couple icons on his tablet computer, then pressed the Bluetooth receiver on his right ear to receive an incoming call.

"They've got the SAILOR team."

That made the President sit up. "Really now? How many bodies did they pull up?" Again, Ramirez looked at his tablet computer for details. The President impatiently tapped her nails on the wooden table and looked around the room. It really wasn't anything special, with a couple pictures of some obscure technocrats adorning the walls.

"Three dead…" the COS finally replied.

"Wait, what?!" POTUS exclaimed. "There's five of them!"

"Maybe they couldn't find the bodies," the COS noted. "You know, they could have been vaporized in an explosion or something like that."

"Oh…oh." The sleep deprivation was really getting to her. "Wait, but we saw the entire fucking thing go down! " she snapped at him. "We saw the entire battle on the live feed!"

The COS shrugged. "Overlord also mentioned something about a SAS team operating in that area and…"

"WHAT!" The President's outburst startled everyone walking outside the conference room for a second, before they all went back to their business. How many other things were going wrong?! She was going to have to have a word with the UK Prime Minister.

"That's what he reported, and…"

"You idiot, they've got two of the bodies then!" POTUS got up from her chair and started pacing around the conference room.

"Well, more like one, I'm sure," the COS said.

"Why the sudden confidence?" President Hamilton had a feeling like she wasn't going like what was going to come up next.

"We have one of the SAILOR team members…alive."

There was a long, long silence.

"What." That "what" from POTUS was much more different than the one earlier on in the conversation.

"Yes ma'am, she's aboard the _Carl Vinson_ right now, undergoing medical treatment."

* * *

The helicopters flew Mina and the team of Marines back to the USS _Carl Vinson_, where she carried the body of Amy all the way across the flight deck (much to the nonchalance of everyone; bodies had been coming through the last six hours and she wasn't any different). After she had gotten inside though, they took Amy's body away, setting it on a body bag. Mina offered no resistance to the security personnel who took Amy's body away and led her to sickbay, where she was looked over by one of the doctors. The interior of the _Carl Vinson_ was a blur, with rows upon rows of bulkheads, doors, various compartments for the workings of one of the biggest ships in the world, and one of ten in the world. After what had seemed like an hour of winding through the convoluted mess of the _Carl Vinson_, they happened upon the even greater mess of sickbay.

Inside sickbay, wounded marines and sailors filled the space inside and spilled out into the halls. Blood occasionally spilled onto the floor, only to be somewhat cleaned up by exhausted medical technicians. Every now and then, a patient being operated on would scream out, his or her yells echoing throughout the hallways. Finally, the medical staff was overworked already to the breaking point, but they continued on nonetheless, despite the carnage around them. It was their job, after all.

"Hey, Dr. Ruiz!" A medical assistant called out to a doctor who was attending to a lightly wounded sailor, pulled from the wreckage of the USS _Rentz._

"Yeah, I'm coming!" Dr. Tina Ruiz had been called up to her Navy Reserve job about a month ago, much to the chagrin of her family. She wouldn't be staying for Christmas or New Years', but then again, serving in the military did come with its hazards.

There were a couple of officers, one with the rank of captain, standing guard around a very frail and tired looking blonde girl near the entrance to sickbay.

"Captain…Pike?" Ruiz squinted at the man's nametag on his blue uniform.

"Captain Ruiz, we need you to do a medical check on this girl here." He gestured toward the girl. "I know you're busy, but this is very important."

"Alright, alright…I'll give her a look." Ruiz looked for a free chair or medical bed, and fortunately found a chair not being used by anyone at the moment.

"Sit down here," Ruiz gestured. Mina complied, sitting down in the chair.

Reminds me of when they brought me to the medical facility, Mina bitterly thought, taking her back those days six months ago. Being there sounded a lot better than the situation she found herself in now.  
Ruiz finished her examination, even if it was somewhat abbreviated. "She looks fine. She's exhausted and has a mild case of dehydration, but I think that she'll make a full recovery…"

Captain Pike cut her off. "Good. She was never here."

"Wait…what?" The security officers took the blonde girl away before Ruiz could get in another word. She looked so defeated, Ruiz noted. Maybe she was one of the Nakanishi people. She didn't have much time to think about that before another call for help from one of the medical assistants thrust her back into the drama at hand.

* * *

"Ms. Mina…"

"It's Mina Aino." It was like these guys didn't know where to put her. She was in the brig of the Carl Vinson now, and that was pleasantly less crowded than the sickbay, though it still had its drawbacks. The walls were gray, the table was gray, the chair was gray…they must have went all out in decorating this place, Mina noted to herself. The only thing that wasn't gray was her hair and the water bottle in front of her, which had been already drained once they had given it to her. The interrogation brought her back to reality.

"Well, Mina," the interrogating officer said to her suspiciously. His nametag said "Paulson," and he didn't look like he was Navy; another glance at his uniform said "US Army." What was an Army guy doing here?

Paulson paused for a second, awkwardly looking at his tablet computer for the inquiries they had done on her earlier. "We can't find any trace of you…anywhere."

Mina blinked at him before responding to his statement. "I'm not working with the Nakanishi Group, if that's what you're asking me."

Paulson simply shook his head at Mina. "Well, I find that hard to believe, since you don't have any identifying marks on your uniform of a foreign nation, and especially of Japan. In fact, we can't even find you listed as a Japanese citizen, period. So that would make you an unlawful combatant, considering the fact that you were found with weapons and explosives."

Great, now they think I'm a terrorist or some stupid shit like that, Mina thought unhappy.

"Can't you ask the captain of the _Murasame_?" she protested. "He knows of our mission here."

Paulson was silent for a second, then took off his wireframe glasses.

"Mina, the _Murasame_ was destroyed earlier today by a missile attack. They sacrificed themselves to protect this very ship. The crew made it out, but the captain and his XO were killed in that attack."

Mina looked down at the ground, thinking of the poor captain they had kicked out of his own wardroom. The only chance at all for her to have her story corroborated at the moment was gone.

With Mina and Artemis out of the picture, the American President betraying them, and the Japanese PM having erased any mention of the program, she was completely and utterly alone. She didn't even have the benefit of citizenship…she was now a stateless citizen. A woman without a home.

"So why don't you tell me what you really doing on that island, and why you were screaming out over the radio, okay?"

Mina told him the entirety of it. Everything, from the beginning. The Japanese PM forming the group. Their missions for the "benefit" of the country. Her and Amy figuring out that the Nakanishi Group was behind everything. Them meeting the President. Singlehandedly dismantling the Nakanishi Group and tracking them down to this island. Assaulting the island in the night, without any support whatsoever, neutralizing the nuclear threat, killing Beryl and Kunzite…all of it. What little good it did for her.

"So, Mina," Captain Paulson said to her. "I'm at a complete loss, to be honest, about your story. You expect me to believe that you're part of a special operations team that went around the world, carrying out acts of sabotage and assassinations for the Nakanishi Group, found out what they were actually doing, then turned on them, enlisting the help of the President herself and finally coming here to sort this entire mess here."

Mina nodded wearily at her interrogator.

"Yes sir. That's the truth." Mina knew that the guy didn't believe her for a second. It was too ridiculous to believe.

"I don't believe you for a second," Captain Paulson said to her.

"Well, that's all I have for you, Captain," Mina shot back, trying her best not to have a complete meltdown in front of him.

A knock on the door interrupted the interrogation, much to the Captain's annoyance.

"Come in," Paulson said.

An intelligence specialist (Navy) opened the door up, with a satellite phone in hand.

"Captain, phone call."

Captain Paulson glared at the poor intelligence specialist, but it was probably important if he was interrupted in the middle of this interrogation. He got up from the chair he was sitting in and walked toward the door, taking the phone from the specialist.

"Captain Paulson speaking," he said, shooing the poor specialist away and closing the cell door behind him.

"This is General Williams."

That took him off guard for a second. What did CINCUSSOC want with him? "Ah…yes, sir," Paulson said hesitatingly into the receiver. "What do you need, sir?"

"You've got that woman we asked to be detained, correct?"

"Yes, I've been interrogating her for the last half hour or so," he said back to the General.  
"Good. I don't think you're going to get much out of her at the moment, so we're going to take her back to the states."

That puzzled Paulson for a second.

"Why do you say that…?"

"Son, the only thing I can say about her is that she's taken down several of my teams today, and that was after shooting her way through the Nakanishi PMC on that island."

"By herself?" Now Mina's story was starting to make more sense, no matter how farfetched it may have seemed to Paulson at the beginning.

"What do you think?" there was a pause as Overlord let the Captain figure that one out. Combined with the facts he had from her and Overlord's cryptic answer, Paulson had a vague idea now what was going on. And Overlord wanted it to stay that way.

"Oh…okay. I think."

"Anyway, get her onto a plane for the States," Overlord said. "We'll handle it from there."

"Will do, General."

Overlord hung up the phone and sat back in his chair. It had certainly been a long day, and he wanted to get back to base. A shower, shave and a nice glass of whisky (Suntory or JW Blue…choices, choices) would round off this extraordinary day. But first, he had to call the President.

* * *

"Thanks General," POTUS said on the phone. "Okay. That's at least somewhat figured out then."

"What is?" COS Ramirez asked her, looking up from his tablet computer.

"What we're going to do with the surviving member of the team. I know her. She's the one that saved my life." Guiltily, she thought back to that day, the explosions…the dead people littering the White House and Congress…too many good statesmen died on that day. "I don't want to think about this issue now. Just…we'll figure it all out later."

The COS nodded, then brought up another topic.

"Madame President, there's another issue that might concern you."

Great. Yet another thing that needs my attention, she grumbled to herself. "And that would be?"

"Your orders being disobeyed."

POTUS breathed in sharply. The COS was right. She couldn't let that one slide.

"Get me Admiral Thompson."

"Right away."

* * *

"Admiral Thompson, what do I do about the NAVCENT commander?" POTUS asked her over the video conference call. The JCS looked like shit; Admiral Thompson's uniform was a bit rumpled and there was a coffee stain on it as well. From what it seemed like, the other members in the background looked exactly the same as her. POTUS noticed the Commandant of the Marine Corps swearing quite profusely…it was understandable though. His beloved Corps had borne most of the damage today, aside from the Navy.

Thompson didn't have much for the President other than the obvious. "I suggest that we relieve him of his command and have him report back here for a courts martial."

"That sounds like a good idea," POTUS said back to the admiral. "Except, if he gets a courts martial, people are going to start wondering what was going on behind the scenes, especially for a man who's just bested the Nakanishi Group. Best if we just let him resign."

Not what I would have done, Thompson thought to herself, but whatever. "Understood Madame President. Should I call him?"

"No, I'll tell the bastard myself. Jorge, get the call set up."

It took a little bit for the call to get through. POTUS sat back in her chair and took a long swig of coffee; she had been up for a long time now, with the hours blending together into one incoherent mess.

"Madame President, what can I do for you?" COMUSNAVCENT said in a pleasant tone. He knew what was coming.

POTUS was going to keep this one short and sweet. "Admiral, you are relieved of your command," she spat into the receiver. "You are to come to Colorado Springs immediately for a debriefing. Do I make myself fucking clear on this one?"

"Yes, Madame…"

POTUS cut him off as he was halfway in replying.

"Must be atmospheric interference," the COS sarcastically commented.

"Yes, it must be," the President replied, just as sarcastically.

* * *

"Looks like this is the last time you'll probably hear from me," COMUSNAVCENT said to his J-2. That entire incident was obviously not transmitted over the loudspeakers, but everyone in the CIC knew what was going down.

"Certainly seems that way." The J-2 snapped a crisp salute. "It's been an honor, sir."

Everyone in the CIC followed the J-2's example, standing up from their chairs and offering salutes to the man. COMUSNAVCENT returned the gesture, saluting the captain of the USS _Carl Vinson_ before heading out. Sure, he had made some mistakes…okay, a lot of mistakes today. No one could have predicted the amount of firepower that island had, or the resistance from those UGVs, or the sudden appearance of the UAVs and UCAVs. That could have easily been forgiven. But since he had disobeyed a direct order from the Commander in Chief…his head was going to roll on this one.

Already on the flight deck, a P-3 Orion had been made ready for him. Orders from the Commander in Chief were probably best carried out immediately, and it had helped that the Orion had just come back from a recon patrol, its crew tired, but still ready to go. COMUSNAVCENT boarded the plane; as he did so, he took one last look at the mighty carrier behind him, symbolizing the power of the United States of America.

He would most certainly miss the Navy.

* * *

"Well, I would like to stay and chat, but it seems like you're going back to the United States," Paulson said, coming back into the room.  
Mina had her head down on the table, napping for a second. She snapped her head up upon hearing him say that. "Wait…what?"

"Orders are orders. And since we have absolutely nothing on you concerning your status as an agent of the Japanese or US government, under the Geneva Convention you are an unprivileged combatant. We get to do basically what we feel is necessary with you."

Bullshit, Mina thought to herself. Glad to see all those years in Afghanistan and Iraq taught you to disregard international agreements or at least twist them to fit your own needs.

"This way, please." Captain Paulson gestured toward the door, to show her out to her fate.

Mina would have loved to smash some heads in now, but she was just too tired. There was no way she was going to get out of this one.

She glumly walked out of the cell, head turned downward, shoulders slumped with tiredness, broken and dispirited.

* * *

"Ma'am, your family is here to see you," the COS said. The situation having been determined safe, the First Family had been flown from their safehouse to Colorado, where they would meet with the President. Jorge disappeared for a second, then returned with her family in tow.

"Mom!" Emma and Jamie scurried into the conference room, followed closely by the First Gentleman.

"Did you get the bad guys, Mom?" Jamie asked her.

"Yes," POTUS said back, slowly. "We got the good guys."

"The good guys?" Jamie looked at her, confused.

"I meant the bad guys, yeah, sorry about that," Elizabeth said to her daughter, smiling weakly. "It's been a long day."

The President would have to sort all that shit about the battle later today, with a press conference, more meetings with the Joint Chiefs, the NSC, what was left of the Armed Forces Committee…but for now, she would enjoy the time she had with her children and spouse.

"Care for some whisky?"

Jamie glared at her mom and dad, obviously disapproving of his suggestion. "Dad! It's only nine in the morning!" she scolded.

The First Gentleman chuckled at his daughter's concern, but continued to address his wife. "It's five o'clock somewhere, hon. You are entitled to at least one drink."

POTUS thought that over for a second.

"Oh hell. Jack, pour me a double."

That made the First Gentleman smile a mile wide. "That's the spirit." He poured her the drink from a suitcase full of booze that he had managed to get in here, and passed out the glasses to everyone (even to the kids). Emma looked suspiciously at the glass, while Jamie was extremely excited to have her first drink.

The First Gentleman raised his glass, along with his daughters to the President. "Cheers."

For the first time in weeks it seemed, the President broke out into a big smile.

* * *

On yet another ship, the _Harry Truman_, the bodies of Lita and Serena were undergoing the same treatment that Amy and Raye had undergone, mainly being put on ice and shipped back to the United States and the UK for "testing." They would get no burial rights, no elaborate funeral, no sobbing family members to say nice things at their eulogy. They had already gotten those when they "first" died, so there wouldn't be any of that now for them.

Within twelve hours, their remains were already back in the United States.


	84. Epilogue: Abide with me

**Epilogue: Abide with me.**

**0800hrs, 31 December 2013, Bloomington, Minnesota, United States**

_"O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't!" Miranda, The Tempest._

* * *

Mina curled up into ball on the bed in the safe house. How she got here was a blur, with a vague recollection of a hospital visit, then lots of plane rides, then arriving here two days ago.

At first glance, keeping Mina in a more secure facility, such as Fort Leavenworth or Guantanamo Bay. Someplace like that. But since Mina didn't even "exist," and now was in the hands of the United States due to a disobeyed order, they simply didn't know what to do with her. Her psychological evaluation showed that she was completely and utterly broken, and that she posed very little threat to anyone else. And since the President didn't want any word on the SAILOR team getting out, she had to keep things as low key as possible. Which made everyone very unhappy.

Fort Leavenworth also had a massive case of "escapees", due to the terrorist attacks that had devastated a good chunk of the prison infrastructure and military facilities that would normally hold a person like Mina. Guantanamo Bay was also having trouble as well, so that was out of the question.

So they stuck her with the FBI until they could unfuck themselves, and figure out what to do with a living, breathing supersoldier. At least the SWAT team was on standby, so if things got out of hand…well, maybe they could slow her down until they could bring in some heavier firepower.

"Hey," one of the FBI Agents said to her, knocking on the door to her room. She brought in a plate of one of those shitty McDonalds platters, full of hotcakes, sausage and eggs. "You have to eat something…" She sat next to Mina, who was still in the fetal position.

"Agent Serxner," another agent said, coming into the room and disturbing the two of them.

"Yeah, York, what is it?" Serxner said to him, shooting him a look. Now was not the time for interruptions…

"It's the field office. They want a status update."

Serxner rolled her eyes at that. "Jesus, I've given them enough fucking status updates, alright? It's like I'm on my Facebook page with these guys."

York shrugged. "Sorry. That's what they wanted."

"Why the hell aren't the US Marshals taking care of this?" Serxner bitched out loud. "Isn't witness protection their thing?"

"Serxner, I have no idea, alright."

"Yeah, you wouldn't. Especially after that incident in that one town…Greenvale, wasn't it?"

Agent York glared at her, but said nothing else. He left the room, leaving the FBI agent with Mina.

"Look, sweetie, you gotta eat something," Serxner said to her, trying to coo her out of your shell. "You've haven't eaten in three days, okay?"

Mina said nothing back to her, despite her good intentions.

"I'll leave this here for you…if you want to eat it." Serxner left the food on the bedside table with a fork, next to Mina's bed, patted her on the back, and then got up to leave the room.

She gave Mina one last glance before she left; her eyes were gaunt and sunk in, her long, blonde hair mussed and unclean, and dried tears staining her eyes. That was odd, somewhat, because Serxner hadn't heard her cry out loud. Maybe she was just silent about it.

Poor girl, Serxner thought. Whatever she's been through, it must have been hell. She closed the door to the room.

* * *

Mina closed her eyes for a second, remembering the time that she had spent in the United Kingdom when she was a younger child. Her parents had taken her to a funeral; one of their coworkers had died in a car accident. Near the end of the funeral, almost spontaneously, everyone began to sing a soft, touching song.

"The minstrel boy to the war is gone, In the ranks of death you will find him."

How true, Mina thought to herself. Everyone that she had known, her best friends were now dead.

"His father's sword he hath girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him."

They had gone into battle, fighting for what they thought was a just and good cause, ready to die if necessary if that meant the injustice that had been inflicted upon the world would be at last resolved.

"Land of Song!" said the warrior bard, "Though all the world betray thee!"

All the world had betrayed them. There was no denying that fact.

"One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard, One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

* * *

She smiled bitterly at the lyrics. How very fitting they were to her own sad situation. One could say that she was the one to carry on the sword, and to play the harp that would sing the praises of an unknown and erased unit of soldiers. But she didn't want to carry it anymore.

"Yeah…uh-huh. Yep. Sure, you betcha." Agent York ended the call on his cell phone and looked at Serxner, who was just coming out of the bedroom.

"Well, you can forget that status report. It looks like this is the last day we're holding her."  
Serxner sighed gladly. "Glad it's not my fucking problem anymore. She's a really fucked up case. Hope she gets some help soon."

Agent York got some coffee from a French press in the kitchen and poured himself a cup. "Who's great idea was it to stick her out in Minnesota, of all the fucking places. There is NOTHING out here."

Serxner rolled her eyes at the man, but he did have a point. "York, quit your bitching. All the maximum security prisons are completely FUBAR right now, and she's been deemed a non-threat by HQ. You know that, so why complain now?"

"It's just…sorry. It's been a really bad couple of weeks. We lost so many good people…" York's eyes fell to the ground, thinking of the horrors that had befallen the nation on the 16th of December.

"Yeah…tell me about it."

There was a moment of silence before York started talking again.

"Do you think they'll let us go back on break?" Agent York asked her, sipping his coffee and staring at the TV blaring away in the kitchen.

Serxner shook her head at that. "Probably not. They'll just keep us working."

"Oh well. Never much liked New Year's celebrations anyway. Did you get around to reading the paperwork on that girl?" York asked absentmindedly.

Serxner shrugged. "Just a little bit. Something about medications and this and that and the other, but she's cooperative and I don't think she needs much else. Just some food and rest. She looks like she came through hell to get here, and I'm just going to leave her alone."

"Sounds good." York turned his attention back to the TV.

The TV was on, showing advertisements in-between shows; "Save big money at Menards!" a jingle sang out, before returning to the normal programming. It was one of those morning talk shows, and the hosts were trying to remain excited, despite the horrible atrocities that had happened in the last couple of weeks. Serxner looked back at the entrance to Mina's bedroom one last time before sitting down at the table in the kitchen, eating her own breakfast and filling out reports.

* * *

Mina waited until the FBI agent was gone, listening for the door to close. When she was sure that Agent Serxner or whatever her name was had left, Mina pulled something out from underneath her pillow.

It was her Glock 26, the weapon that had seen so much action in the last six months. One full clip of ammunition. The FBI agents hadn't been very thorough in searching her, and she had managed to sneak it in during her flight over from Socotra to Germany, then back to the United States in a disassembled form. Whoever was in charge of her, was not good at operational security, that's for sure.

She didn't want to take any more lives…she wanted to take her own. What was the point of living now? Amy was dead. Serena was dead. Lita was dead. Raye was dead. She didn't even exist as person. And now, she could look forward to being a prisoner until the day she died.

Mina momentarily put the gun back underneath the pillow and sat up, slowly and painfully pushing her frail body back up from one of the pillows.

"Damn." As she breathed in, something about the dry air made her cough. She tried to swallow, but it only made her cough even more, so she picked herself off of the bed and walked quickly to the bathroom. More coughing.

Then blood.

"Great." There was some blood in the sink now, after Mina had hacked it up during another coughing fit. Whatever was happening to her body, it wasn't good. But there wasn't anything she could do about it. Mina turned the faucet on and cupped her hands in the cool water. During winter in Minnesota, the pipes got extremely cold, but that also made for some relief if you were having a coughing fit. The ice cold water went down smoothly. She splashed some water over her face in order to clear her head a bit; as she did so, she caught her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Hollow, gaunt eyes, with sunken cheeks, messy and unkempt hair and a thousand yard stare greeted her. She looked away, ashamed of her appearance.

As she came out of the bathroom, Mina felt her stomach rumble extremely loudly. There was no denying it now; she needed some food. Looking at that stupid plate of food, it took her back to her first meal at the medical facility; Green tea, rice, miso soup, tamagoyaki, and some salted salmon, with umeboshi on the side. That seemed so much better than this processed…shit. Taking the plate gingerly, she sat on the side of the bed with a fork that Agent Serxner had left with the meal, staring at it for a second.

"Itadakimasu." She slowly clapped her hands together and dug into the meal with a fork, consuming it rapidly. It was awful tasting, but when you didn't have anything to eat for the last couple of days, anything tasted good. Finishing the meal, she put the empty plate back on the table.

Mina then looked at the gun, wondering if she should do it. It would be so easy, just putting the gun into her mouth like the fork she had just eaten breakfast with, pull the trigger…

No.

A voice in her head told her not to do it.

It sounded like Amy's voice, actually.

"Amy…? Are you there?" Mina whispered quietly. She had no idea what was going on.

The voice disappeared as soon as it had come, leaving Mina sitting on that pathetic bed in a pathetic safe house. Memories of her time with the SAILOR team, of all the missions they had gone on, of her relationship with Amy…it all flashed by so quickly.

She didn't know what to do. She was so very tired. Tired of it all. Tired of being used. Tired of not having control over her life. Tired of international conspiracies. And now, she would probably end up being poked and prodded for the rest of her life, treated like cattle until she died maybe five or six years down the road, if she was lucky.

Oh well.

Mina put the gun back underneath the pillow, and reached for the light by her bedside.

She turned the switch, and everything went black. Pulling the sheets over her, she felt the coolness of them washing over her tired body.

At least she could finally have some rest now.

Mina closed her eyes and fell asleep.

* * *

Postscript: This was originally a separate chapter until it was pointed out to me that it went against guidelines. It has been moved here, and I apologize for any awkwardness that may result.

**Author's Afterword:**

_"Dear authors! suit your topics to your strength, And ponder well your subject, and its length; Nor lift your load, before you're quite aware, What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear." Lord Bryon, __Hints from Horace._

* * *

I briefly touched on the origins of this story in the foreword, but I wish to elaborate in further detail upon how this story came to life, seeing the main part is concluded. As always, reading this is optional, as I do not want to bore you with details that you may not want to read (and it's really long).

* * *

As mentioned in the foreword, this story came about in February of 2012 and completed in July of 2012, after finishing up watching "Sailor Moon Abridged," which brought back happy memories of a better time, when dubs were awful, theme songs were rocking out, and in general, anime was not as well understood as it is today. When I wrote this, I literally sat down at my desk and started writing with no direction whatsoever. I had written before, but nothing on the scale of this. My previous works (only written for friends, sorry) only totaled about 70,000 words in sum, and I did not expect this story to expand too far beyond that, let alone past the 300,000 word mark. I thought that 150,000 words would be enough…turns out it wasn't.

* * *

I had also had some experience with other, more academic forms of writing as well (Chicago Manual of Style, ewww), but those were something else, and most definitely not fanfic. I tried not to take this work too seriously, but it was a significant amount of effort and I was surprised that I could even write this much. I also know that some of the earlier parts were not as fleshed out, since I was still trying to find my writing style, and that the dialogue can be quite stilted and unnatural at times, due to my experience in academic forms of writing. A side note; All the epigraphs (the quotes at the beginning of the chapter) come from works that I have personally read or seen, with a few exceptions (such as the quote about meat and Republicans…that one was too good to pass up). I felt like these were important to help set the scene and to perhaps foreshadow (or contradict) what goes on in the chapter.

* * *

I drew upon many experiences in my life, plus the media that I have obviously consumed in my short time on this good Earth. I tried to do a lot of research on the locations and have tried to not merely reduce them down to caricatures or stereotypes, which is unfortunately very easy to do. Same with the people of those settings as well. Many of the Original Characters are based upon people that I have come into contact with, but despite this, I have altered their personalities and such so that it does not become a complete exported character. I tried my best when it came to military and information technology research, and drew upon many sources to help flesh out the details and create a living, breathing story in which the reader could be immersed. I have very limited experience with Linux and programming languages, but I wanted to show the highly technical aspect of the world we live in today. Also, I wanted this story to be global in scale, since the internet and easy means of transportation across continents has brought the entire world closer together and in some cases, quite literally. What happens in one place affects people in another, and I wanted to make that very clear from the beginning. Case in point; this story has readers from Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Mexico, India, Japan, Ireland, Iceland, the Netherlands, the Philippines, the Russian Federation and many more.

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One of the more obvious influences (other than _Sailor Moon_, duh) is _Gunslinger Girl_, marked by the similarities in the theme, action and characterization of that particular manga/anime. The similar training, the augmented bodies, and their skill in battle are very comparable to those characters in GSG. However, I wanted to make sure that this was not too influenced by this series, so I tried to change it up; no looming handlers, just Luna and Artemis talking to them, more independence, rebelling against their masters and in general, trying to be the "good guys." In GSG, it's a bit…more complicated.

* * *

Other anime/Manga that I have consulted would be _Eden of the East, Gun X Sword_, _Azumanga Daioh_ (used for the slice of life sections), Lucky Star (that were a lot of the "…it smelled like," orphaned punch lines come from), _RahXephon__**,**__Guilty Crown_, _Hetalia: Axis Powers_, _Haruhi Suzumiya,_ and oddly enough, _Baka to Test to Shōkanjū, _which was the basis for some of the VR training.

* * *

The books that I have been influenced include by _Starship Troopers_, the _United States Marine Corps and Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual_, the _Battle of Dorking_ (the one book that started invasion literature), _A Bridge too Far_ (the book, not the movie, that comes later), and _Debt of Honor_ plus _Executive Orders_, one of which involves the Japanese as hostile enemies of the United States, and another dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack that leaves the US crippled. The naval engagements are similar to the ones in _Red Storm Rising_, down to the surprise attack on the fleet and the use of drones as decoys. _Not a Good Day to Die_, a book about Operation Anaconda, was a major influence, showing how a top-heavy command structure can needlessly complicate and squander key assets like D-Force and intelligence showing enemy movements. _Shake Hands with the Devil_ was a particular influence on me, as it was my first introduction on the Rwandan Genocide; I picked the book up literally a month before _Hotel Rwanda_ came out, and I knew the entire backstory behind the Genocide when I went to go see the movie. This influenced the overall themes of international apathy and nonchalance when it comes to things we don't care about or know about. Other books include _Planet India_ (about the rise of India, duh. Fun statistic, one out of ten people in the world is an Indian under the age of twenty five!), all the political treaties mentioned in Chapter XII, _The Longest Day_, _The Last Battle_ (along with _A Bridge too Far_, were all incredibly great books about WWII by Cornelius Ryan), the_ History of the Peloponnesian War, _ the _Anabasis_, the _Apology _(by Plato, concerning the trial of Socrates), _Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, _and many others.

* * *

The movies and TV shows that have influenced me are predictably mainstream; _The Bourne _Series, _James Bond_, and _24_, to a certain extent, since I kinda lost interest after the third or fourth season.

The scene where Jason Bourne has to kill someone to accept the Treadstone program is basically the basis for the "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" chapter. The variety of gadgets and action scenes are taken from a potpourri of James Bond films including _Goldfinger_, _The Living Daylights_, _Goldeneye,_ _Tomorrow Never Dies_, and both _Casino Royale_ and _Quantum of Solace_. The fighting is more based off of the Bourne series and _24_, with it being down and dirty rather than the choreographed wire-fu of Chinese films. Several scenes were lifted directly from the movie _A Bridge Too Far_, which were included in the shootout in Busan, South Korea and the engagement in Unity State. The UGVs or the "Youma" are kind of based off of the proto-Terminator style robots in _Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines_, but they are mostly based off of real life prototypes of UGVs like the Gladiator Tactical UGV and the Foster-Miller TALON.

Some of the more obscure movies include the French movie _The Nest_, which is basically like_ Assault on Precinct 13_, except more minimalist. Another influence came from _The Way of the Gun_, another low budget film, but has surprisingly good gunplay due to one of the brothers of the directors being a US Navy SEAL. The "move, moving" dialogue that occasionally crops up from time to time is taken from this. Other movies include _Chungking Express_ (well, there is an entire chapter named after it!), _A Better Tomorrow, Aliens, Predator_, _Hot Fuzz_ (Sgt. Angel shows up in the story, if you couldn't tell)and _Heat_.

Other TV shows include _Lost_, where the multiple plotlines come into play, _Adam-12, Hunter_, _Z-Cars_, _The Bill_, _The Sweeny,_ _Stargate SG-1, Star Trek: TNG, Yes Minister _and _Yes Prime Minister_ (both were instrumental in helping to write the UK scenes), the _Pacific, Band of Brothers_, and _Generation Kill_ (and yes, I've read the book too).

* * *

Of course, no plot reference would be complete without video games, so here it goes. Some of the plot does take a homage to Modern Warfare, and despite the atrocious story in MW2 and MW3, it still had a little bit of influence on me, including some of the door breaching sequences when the SAILOR team attacks the Nakanishi HQ in Japan, Lita's riot shield (which is a _ballistic shield, _big difference), tactical level shootouts, the AC-130, and overall level of action that takes place (no matter how ridiculous). The air battle sequences were taken from _Ace Combat_, right down to the callsigns of the fighters in the Battle of Socotra, and some from _Battlefield 3_ (Shark Flight is in the on-rails plane scene in that game). The Metal Gear Solid Franchise also had some influence, due to its discourse on the nature of war and the implications thereof. Also, the VR training comes from that as well.

The more obscure games that influenced me include "_Act of War: Direct Action_," which is a VERY good RTS, and despite being released in the mid-2000s, still has better graphics than a lot of RTS games out there. One of the developers said that the character models are basically on par with Half-Life, which is saying something for an RTS. Anyway, the micromanagement of the units and the overall plot (a big megacorp influencing world events, etc) was an influence on this story. Other games include _Rainbow Six _(when it was a tactical shooter), the _Walking Dead_, for its dialogue and split second choices that severely affect the gameplay, _Splinter Cell: Conviction_ (and the others) for their take on stealth, _Operation Flashpoint_ (plus _ARMA_ and _ARMA II_), _Alpha Protocol_ (again, for the dialogue system like the _Walking Dead_), _Ghost Recon: Future Soldier_ (the HUD that the SAILOR team uses in influenced by is taken from that game), and others…I can't remember off of the top of my head, heh.

* * *

Other influences included are surprisingly enough, _Love in the Time of Cholera_ (okay movie, great book), while not finding its way into the story proper, it still had some influence on how I write romance and love, and exposed me to the genre of "Magical Realism". _No Country for Old Men_ (great book, great movie), was also not in the story directly, but the messed up nature of the setting in that particular story helped me in my world-building exercises concerning this story. Several religious texts were also consulted (don't want to start a flame war here, so that's all that is going to be said about that), and _Katawa Shoujo,_ which has influenced the themes on disability in this story. Web Original content was also added as a reference; the Canadian squadron in the chapter "The Battle of Socotra", is shout-out to the Canadian web show _Video Games Awesome_, which is a…uh…awesome show about…uh…video games. _The Salvation War, Tiberium Wars_ and _The Conversion Bureau: Not Alone_, also were some of the basis for my story, although I did not know of the latter until very late into my writing of this story.

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Please note these references and sources are not the full extent of my research, just the ones I could think off of the top of my head at the moment.

If you have any questions, please PM me or write in the comments in the respective chapter or on this chapter page. I hope that you enjoyed this story, and thank you so much to those who helped out in making this story come to life, especially Dominus Tenebrosus, Neanda, NT, HN, and "Kathie Hanson". Again, many thanks to all of you for reading.

Sincerely,

Sierraoscar154

PS: There's a bunch of Omake in the works, and I have decided to put the commentary on hold, since a lot of it ended up stating the obvious. Much of my influence was explained in this Afterword, and I want to concentrate on new material rather than rehashing the old stuff.


	85. Omake: Lita, defender of the peace

**Omake Chapter: Lita, defender of the peace.**

**1630hrs, 3 September 2010, Tokyo, Japan.**

_"The spirit is to chase the enemies around from side to side, even though they come from all four directions. Observe their attacking order, and go to meet first those who attack first." Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of the Five Rings._

_"We're gonna go inside, we're gonna go, outside, inside and outside. We're gonna get 'em on the run boys, and once we get 'em on the run, we're gonna keep 'em on the run!" Kunte Rockne, All American._

* * *

It was a nice day for Lita Kino. The sun was shining, birds were chirping, she just had sex and it felt really good…no, just kidding on that accord. The wind rushed through her long, brown skirt as she skipped happily home from school, ready to enjoy the upcoming weekend after the half-day of classes on Saturday. There were some good recipes she wanted to try out this weekend, mainly some omurice and curry that she had found on the internet. There were some ingredients that she needed to pick up on the way back from school, so she could enjoy the walk home even more.

Lita was just outside the school gates when she heard some loud voices behind her, on the open field in front of the gates.

"Hey there, little girly."

That made Lita stop in her tracks. Oh hell no, no one person was going to call her "little girl" and get away with it. She turned around to see that the offender was not talking to her. Nor was he alone. Instead, there were at least five guys surrounding a helpless girl, about her age, and making threatening advances toward her. The poor girl was rooted to the spot, terrified of the senior aged male students. It wasn't an uncommon sight here, and incidents like this almost never got reported to the proper authorities.

That pissed Lita off. A lot. This was not going to happen if she was going to have any say in the matter. She rolled up her sleeves and walked toward the five scumbags.

From fifteen meters away, the leader who was harassing the girl looked up from his badmouthing and saw Lita storming up. Her reputation wasn't unknown around here, but he thought that he could take her on. After all, he was the star soccer player here on campus, strutting his stuff as team captain. He certainly got a lot of "action".

"Well, well, well, look what we have here boys!" he said to the other people in his clique. "Our resident troublemaker."

Lita just stared him down for a second, then grabbed the girl and whispered in her ear.

"Go on, get out of here. I got this."

The poor girl nodded her thanks and skedaddled out of there.

"Hey! We were just about to get to the fun part with her," the team captain complained, mockingly. He watched the girl run off, then turned his attention to Lita. "Looks like just found our new plaything," he said, cracking his knuckles together.

Lita continued to stare the ringleader down, the finally spoke, carefully and slowly.

"Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to eviscerate you and use your gastrointestinal tract as a lubricant as I fornicate with your skull."

That got the ringleader's attention. "Wait, what?"

"I'm going to skull fuck you."

"How is that possi…"

He never got the chance. Lita's right fist impacted with the captain's face at a force measuring 180 kilograms, almost the amount of many black-belt level karate or taekwondo experts. The results were spectacular. First, the punch was not enough to break or dislodge the jaw, but it was enough to make it hurt a lot. Her punch was hard enough however, to chip some teeth and to cause some bleeding of the gums. Lastly, it managed to stun the bastard, leaving him reeling back in immense pain and agony.

"Goddammit! Don't just stand there! Fuck that bitch up!" he managed to gurgle out before collapsing to the ground.

The first of his lackeys, a guy who played center field, charged at her, flailing his fists. Lita easily stepped to the side and he fell over onto the ground, carried by his own momentum. A second guy, a defensive midfielder, swung a punch at Lita. At the same time, the third of the lackeys, the goalkeeper, charged from behind her and tried to pin her to the ground by tackling her. Again, Lita just jumped to the right as she saw the midfielder swinging his punch in order to avoid being hit, but the goalkeeper ended up tackling him instead. The final guy, a striker, tried to high-kick Lita in the chin, but simply ended up straining his leg as Lita caught the kick and shoved him backward onto the grass.

Despite their humiliation, these four jokers weren't out yet and now their blood was fired up.

"Bitch! You'll pay!" the midfielder screamed at her, charging at her again. This time, the four of them all attacked at once, leaving Lita with few options.

Thankfully, that option was to attack. She dashed forward and body-slammed the oncoming midfielder, all sixty-five kilos of her crunching against his frame.

"Ow!" He collapsed immediately, the wind knocked out of him and out of the fight.

With the midfielder out of the way, Lita turned her attention to the goalkeeper coming up from behind. He threw a punch, she dodged it, and in the process grabbing his punching arm and brought her elbow down on his elbow, almost breaking the arm and causing extreme pain for him. He too went down, screaming.

The two remaining lackeys hesitated for a second, after seeing what had happened to their friends there. That was all the time that Lita needed.

She charged at the striker first, slamming into his body with her shoulder and knocking him to the ground. Lita only had a second before the centerfielder punched at her, hitting her in the face.

Lita felt the pain shoot through her face, sending shrills of agony up and down her body. Furious that the person had the gall to land a punch, she grabbed her attacker and slammed her face into his, stunning him and causing blood to gush profusely from his nose.

Behind her, the team captain had managed to stagger up and try to get Lita in a chokehold, but was quickly shoved down to the ground.

"Hey, who's that person over there?" another striker said, coming out from the locker rooms across the soccer field.

"Shit, that's the bitch Lita," one of the defenders said. They saw her land the finishing blow to the team captain, stomping on his hand and causing him to scream out in pain.

"She's beating up Kenta! Hey guys! Kenta's in trouble!" the striker yelled into the locker room. Within a couple of seconds, the rest of the twenty man soccer team was streaming out of the locker room, their coaches wondering what the hell was going on.

It really wasn't much of a contest. For the soccer team, that is.

As they charged down the field, Lita stood there, smiling at them. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Two defenders, a right and left back screamed in, yelling something incomprehensible at her as they readied their fists for action. Lita just stood there, waiting.

Fifteen meters…ten….five…

When they were no more than a meter away, Lita stuck out both of her arms and clotheslined them, sending both of them sprawling on the ground.

Next up was the rest of the midfield. Two more players ran in, ready to avenge their fallen comrades.

Lita returned the favor in kind, executing a high kick at an approaching attacking midfielder, snapping his chin back amongst a geyser of blood. On her way down from the high kick, she tackled the wide midfielder and slammed his head into the ground, knocking him out of the fight.

Lastly a couple of forwards rushed her, four of them surrounding her. Lita wondered why the soccer team was so big, seeing that they could only have ten or so people on the field at the time. Must be the substitutes, which would also explain her ease in defeating them.

The right and left forwards charged in, arms out and ready to engulf her in 150 kilos worth of body weight combined. She jumped back and slammed their heads together, knocking them out.

The last two members of the soccer team, a secondary striker and a winger, hesitated…then ran back to locker room.

With the fight effectively over, Lita caught her break and wiped the sweat from her brow. Her uniform was sopping wet with blood and sweat, with some grass stains added for good measure. After catching her breath she took stock of her surroundings.

Lita had just covered half of the soccer field, leaving broken players in her wake, moaning and groaning all over the place. It didn't seem like she had covered a lot of distance, but in a scant couple of seconds, she had managed to do so and fighting off several people at the same time.

Seeing that he work was done, she walked back toward the school gates, where she could see a couple of police cars just now pulling up. Time to face the music, she thought. It was totally worth it though.

She walked past the soccer captain, who was still struggling to pull himself up, acting like he was still in charge around here.

"Is that all you got Lita! Fuck you!" he yelled at her, getting to his knees.

She just looked at him, letting him suffer on that soccer field.

"Don't you dare walk away from me Lita!" Again, more silence.

"Lita! Lita, get back you bitch and finish me like a man you are!" he sneered.

She just shook her head, and continued to walk toward the gates of the school, where the principal and several police officers were waiting. They moved in, taking her by both arms and leading her to the principal.

"Lita…look what you've done," the principal said, shaking his head. "Damn, this takes the cake."

He leaned in and brought his voice down to a whisper.

"But you did good. Bastards had it coming." He sighed, regretting the next part of what he was going to have to say.

"I'm going to have to expel you, but it could be much, much worse." The police officers there reinforced that fact.

Lita just shrugged. "Sounds good to me." Never liked going to this school anyway, she thought to herself. "Can you at least get me somewhere else then?"

The principal nodded. "I know the principal over at Azuban High. They're a bit picky, but I'll get you over there. Just don't mess it up over there, okay?"

Lita nodded. "Thanks." With that, she shrugged off the police officers, walking out the gates with a good portion of the student body watching her leave, peering out windows and gathering on the courtyard outside, awed by her actions.

She simply walked on. Today was a good day indeed.


	86. Omake: Raye, guardian of the temple

**Omake Chapter: Raye, guardian of the temple.**

**1645hrs, 23 December 2011, Hikawa Shrine, Tokyo, Japan.**

_"The spirit of fire is fierce, whether the fire be small or big; and so it is with battles. The Way of battles is the same for man to man fights and for ten thousand a side battles." Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of the Five Rings._

_"The problem with political jokes is that they get elected." Will Rodgers._

* * *

"Grandpa, you okay?"

It was a snowy day at the Hikawa shrine, a fine layer of the white stuff blanketing everything. Christmas lights dangled from trees and Worshippers had come in day and night, the bells clanging and the clunk clunk of change landing in the offering trays by the bells. Raye found herself quite busy helping them out, smiling at the ones who behaved themselves and scowling at those who tried to hit on her. "This is a place of worship!" she admonished aggressively. Needless to say, an aggressive woman in Japanese society was not looked highly upon and so business had suffered a little bit. But no matter.

"Yeah…I'm…I'm a bit tired," he said back to her, a weak smile on her face poorly masking his discomfort. As of course, it didn't convince Raye, and she persisted.

"Grandpa, go back to your room and lay down. I don't want you catching a cold."

"I'm fine, really Raye…" He stopped midsentence.

At first, Raye thought that he had a stroke or a heart attack or something. She rushed over to him, by the steps leading up to the shrine. Then she turned around and looked in the general direction he was staring in.

A fancy Toyota Century limo pulled up in front of the shrine, with small flags of the Democratic Party of Japan adorning the front of the car. Another car drove past and stopped a little bit further away, probably a security detail.

"Shit." That could only mean one thing.

The driver got out of the front and went to the back, opening one of the doors up to reveal Mr. Hino himself. He had a swagger around him that almost made Raye want to puke right then and there.

"Raye!" he exclaimed, a large smile adorning his face as he walked up to her. He held out his arms for a hug.

"What do you want, dad?" Raye nonchalantly said to him, turning away and giving a look to grandpa. He could only nod and start walking back up the stairs to the shrine, shaking his head.

"Now don't be that way," Mr. Hino chided to her. "I'm here for our monthly catch-up dinner. It's Christmas and all, don't be a downer."

Raye hated his smile. It was a politician's smile, tailor made for the cameras and the photo-ops. The muscles of his mouth were perfectly measured out to curve upward, exposing his perfectly whitened teeth and matching his perfectly pampered face. That was all great and all, but like many things in life, once you got up close and personal, it all fell apart.

"Fine, I'm coming. It's not like I'm doing a lot here anyway," Raye sarcastically said to him, getting into the Toyota.

"Now, now," Mr. Hino said, sliding next to her and putting his arm around her. "We are going to have a good time. It's even on me."

"That's great, dad." Not like I could afford anything that you buy.

"Well, we're going to the New York Grill."

Raye's mouth twitched. That tourist trap? Why couldn't they at least go someplace that was a bit more tasty…

The rides to the Park Hyatt took an excruciating hour, with Mr. Hino going on and on about how the party was going to make him the Prime Minister in about a year or so when they made sure that their victories in the Diet were solid and that the DPJ was never going to take back their spot as the dominant party.

"…and the idiot said to me, that smells bad! And I said to him, well that's too bad for you! And then I kicked him out of my office." Mr. Hino slapped his leg in laughter as the car pulled up to the expensive and ritzy Shinjuku Park towers. The driver stopped the car and let both of them out, while he went to park the car in the basement parking. The security detail was not far behind, and four burly men escorted Raye and Mr. Hino to the elevators.

The Park Hyatt Tokyo was built on the top on the Shinjuku Park Towers, from floors 39 to 52. Some astute people might remember that it was featured in _Lost in Translation_ predominately, and it's no Motel Six, that's for sure. Shinjuku Park Towers had been completed in 1994, just in time for the bubble economy to explode, driving down commercial real estate prices considerably and being a pain in the ass for everyone involved. Well, at least the hotel was doing fine at least.

The elevator ride up was equally unhappy as the car ride, with Mr. Hino not shutting the fuck up, as Raye continued to endure his idiotic banter about his taxpayer funded ego trip.

What the hell have I gotten myself into, Raye thought to herself, looking the reflection on the elevator door as her dad babbled on cheerfully. Every fucking month I tell myself that it's nothing, it's not going to be bad, it's just a lunch or dinner, just endure and you'll get a free meal out of thing. Instead, it gets worse and worse as my so-called dad continues to gain more power than he knows what to do with and his ego gets bigger and bigger.

Ding. The elevator doors opened up to the 41st floor, the check in lobby. A huge throng of reporters immediately swarmed over them, almost steamrolling Raye in the process to get to talking to her dad.

"Hey, back up!" he sternly said to a photographer. "You almost knocked over my daughter!"

"Sorry, sir!" the photographer said, backing up. The security detail moved in and managed to push some of the reporters and photographers back.

For a moment, Raye thought that her asshole dad actually showed some compassion for her. Which was quickly ruined by him grabbing onto her and smiling for a photo op.

"Raye, smile, the press eats this shit up," he whispered to her.

Oh how I hate you, Raye thought, smiling for the cameras. The flashes from the DSLRs blinded her for a second before Mr. Hino continued his way forward.

"Mr. Hino, can you confirm that you'll be in a position for the PM's office?" a reporter in the back of the throng yelled at him.

"I'm sorry, I cannot confirm or deny that right now," he shouted back, continuing to walk forward, Raye unhappily at his side.

"Mr. Hino, what do you think about the persecution of Koreans in Japan!"

Now that wasn't from a reporter, as no one from the press would dare to criticize him in public. Several activists were at the back of the group of reporters as well, but they were trying to push their way forward. Two members from the security detail pushed their way through the reporters and shoved the activists aside, while the building security took care of shoving them into the stairwell and making them walk all the way down to the first floor. Not even fazed by that little disturbance, Mr. Hino addressed the reporters one more time before leaving.

"Alright, I must get going now," Mr. Hino said to the reporters. "But remember, the press conference is next week before the New Year!"

Mr. Hino and Raye made their way out of the gaggle of people and toward the check in desk. The receptionist looked up at him and immediately handed Mr. Hino a hotel key for one of the suites. Such were the benefits of being one of the head honchos.

"Why are we going here?"

"You can't go there looking like that." Raye was still wearing her miko outfit. "Gotta have a place to change."

"Oh…okay…"

"And plus, we'll be staying the night as well."

Shit. This just kept getting better and better.

After checking in, Raye followed her father to the elevators again, past the dispersing reporters and up to one of the top level suites.

No expense was spared for Raye, it seemed. As her dad opened the room up, elegance and splendor stared her in the face. Flat screen TVs, a minibar, a modern computer for business, and a beautiful view of the Tokyo skyline…it was all too much. And to top it all off, a fancy, yet simple dress lay on the king sized bed, a pure silky white with a low cut in front for her…ampleness to show for the entire world. At least the back of the dress was closed, so she could keep her underwear on and not go for those strapless bras. Several pairs of shoes, from stilettos to…stilettos, were laid out at the foot of the bed.

I fucking hate stilettos, Raye thought. They were probably picked out for the photo-op we're going to have later tonight.

"Well, I'll leave in here for about a half an hour," Mr. Hino said with a smile. "Then we'll go upstairs to the restaurant." With that, he left, probably to go bang his secretary or something like that. Or make business calls. Whichever came first.

Raye sighed at the dress in front of her. She wanted to burn it up, toss it out the window and never see it again. It wasn't a happy scene at all.

Reluctantly, she put the dress on to make sure it fit, and then the shoes as well, almost falling over in the process because she wasn't used to wearing such shoes.

The dress was fine, the shoes were fine, it was all just…fine. Raye went over to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her pale skin contrasted with the jet black hair that hung past her shoulders; she put in back into a tight bun.

"What time is it?" She went over to the bed where she had thrown some of her belongings and looked at her mobile; it read 1825. Five more minutes.

"Well, if dad's paying…" Raye went over to the minibar and opened it up; small bottles of every alcohol known to man stared her back in the face.

"For a good time, make it Suntory time," she muttered to herself. "Yeah, what the hell."

She picked out a small bottle of the 12 year single malt and poured about half a shot into a glass.

Knock knock. Someone was at the door. Raye chugged the whisky down and put the glass back into the minibar. The hotel would later charge about 20,000 yen for that, but that was just a drop in the bucket for Mr. Hino. Of course, there would be other charges as well…

"Are you ready Raye?" Mr. Hino was standing at the door, his secretary at his side, beaming with radiance that seemed unnatural. An aftereffect of being screwed by one of the more powerful men in Japan, Raye thought.

"Yes, I'm ready, dad."

"Then off we go."

The three of them made their way to the elevator, with Mr. Hino and his secretary…what was her name again?

"You're so sweet, Kaidou," Mr. Hino said to her, hitting the call button for the elevator.

"And you are too!" she replied, smiling all the while. She wasn't too much older than Raye, maybe twenty four or twenty five, it was hard to tell. She had a little bit of a tummy, but then again, Mr. Hino had quite a larger one. In the older days, she'd be disregarded as a "Christmas Cake", but times had changed, even for Mr. Hino.

More elevator riding, and inane conversation later, they were in the New York Grill. Their table had been specifically picked out with a view of the Tokyo skyline, and the restaurant was chatty and lively. Several more photographers took some more pictures, which would appear on various newspapers and websites the next day.

"So, what will you have to drink?" Mr. Hino asked Kaidou after blinking away the flashes on the photographers' DSLRs.

"I'll take an Amaretto Sour, please," she said to him. "I'm so excited to be here, I've never been to a restaurant of this caliber before!"

Mr. Hino smiled that awful smile at her. "Yeah, it's pretty good. Right, Raye?"

Raye could just simply nod, staring at the couple across the table from herself. The waiter came shortly after, bringing the menu by and taking their drink orders. Mr. Hino had himself a glass of whisky, neat, Kaidou got her Amaretto Sour, and Raye was stuck having a Diet Coke. There were some things a politician's daughter couldn't get out of, and the drinking limit was one of those things.

"What would you like to order?" Kaidou asked Mr. Hino, looking over the menu intently.

Mr. Hino briefly looked over the menu, but from what Raye could tell, he had been here enough times in the last week or so from the way he reacted to the items listed. "Uh, let's see. Okay, I know what I'm getting. Raye, you ready?"

Again, Raye just nodded. There wasn't anything to say to those two.

The waiter came by and stood ready to take their order. He had been well trained for his career, and serving high-powered politicians or businessmen was a daily occurrence in his line of work.

"Great. I'll have the King Crab cakes, the Kobe Beef Cut, and a side order of mashed potatoes."

"And for you ma'am?" The waiter meant Kaidou.

"Um…I'll have the Caesar Salad, the Hokkaido Scallops and a side of Pickled Roma tomatoes."

"That comes with all those other vegetables there too," the waiter said, pointing at the menu.

"Yes, thank you."

He finished scribbling the order down and turned his attention to Raye.

"And for the young lady?"

Well, at least someone here respects me, she thought.

"I'll have Caesar Salad as well, please. Then I'll have the Prime Tuna steak and the Grilled Asparagus on the side."

"Oh, I'm very sorry, but we don't have the Tuna steak or the Asparagus."

Basically, the story of my life, was the sentence that almost shot out of Raye's mouth. Thankfully, her father did it for her.

"What do you mean, 'you're out'? This is a high-class restaurant here, and you run out of stuff?"

"I'm very sorry, but demand was extremely high already. Furthermore…"

Mr. Hino rudely cut him off. "I'm not interested in your excuses…"

The commotion was attracting the attention of the other diners. Raye wanted to disappear right then and there to avoid further embarrassment. "Dad, I'm fine. I'll get something else."

"Oh no, Raye. I'm not going to let this one slide."

Rather than an exercise in care for his daughter, it was an exercise in how much power he could wield and get away with it. In a span of a few minutes, he had the head manager AND the head chef out there, bowing profusely and apologizing in front of everyone. They still couldn't get her the specific dishes, so she ordered the Ribeye and Duck Fat fries…might as well go all out with the fat content.

"Well, now that's resolved, a toast now!" He raised his glass of whisky, along with Kaidou as well. Awkwardly, Raye held up her glass of Diet Coke and their glasses clanked together.

The rest of the night passed by uneventfully, much to Raye's relief. They went back to their rooms, with Kaidou and Mr. Hino completely wasted.

"Goooddd….nighhttt…." Mr. Hino slurred to Raye as he walked away from her room.

"Mmmm…" was all that Kaidou could offer. Raye rolled her eyes and slammed the door in their faces. She could hear them stumbling down the hallway, laughing merrily as they went. In less than five minutes, Raye has tossed off her dress and those stupid stilettos, and after another drink from the minibar, was in bed.

* * *

Raye awoke to find a message on the hotel phone saying that the room had been paid for, that dear old dad had gone off to work and he would see her "later" (meaning in a month or so), and that there was a car on call for her outside the building. There was also a 20,000 yen check for her at the front desk as well, for her "living" expenses, but it was just another bribe. Not seeing much of a choice, she changed back into her miko outfit and took the night dress with her, just in case her father decided to take her out to any more tourist traps or photo-ops events.

The car outside took her back to Hikawa shrine. As the car pulled up, Raye expected throngs of worshippers to be there. Instead, the shrine was completely deserted, with a sign by the entrance saying that it was closed for the day. She was out of the vehicle before it had fully stopped, already running up the stairs.

Goddammit, this is what dad wanted, she thought, trying not to cry up the flight of stairs to the temple. He wanted to keep me away from the shrine because Grandpa is in bad health and he can't handle this place by himself anymore.

Raye burst into the living quarters of the temple and found her Grandpa in a futon, under a bunch of blankets. He looked really bad,

"Raye…Raye…you're back," he said weakly. "How was dinner?"

Raye blinked away some tears and tried to not lose it in front of her sickly Grandfather.

"Dinner was fine, gramps. I had some good food and…" She trailed off, looking at him lying there.

"That's…that's great to hear," he replied back. "How was your father?"

"The same as usual," Raye said. "An asshole."

Grandfather laughed at that. "Raye, you couldn't be more right."

He smiled at her, this time, it was full of energy. It was if Raye's mere presence was enough to cure him of whatever ailment had been afflicting him for the last couple of days.

"What time did you close the shrine yesterday?"

"Almost right after you left. I'm not the same man I was all those years ago. When you mother…"

"I know gramps. I know." Raye had to wipe away more of those tears, remembering her late mother and how her asshole dad barely blinked an eye at her death.

"Well, no use staying here all day," Grandfather finally said. He threw off the blankets and sprang back into action. "Shall we?"

Raye nodded. "We shall."

"That's the spirit. How about some fried chicken after today is done?"

"Can't think of a better way to celebrate Christmas."

The two of them walked toward the entrance of the temple, with Raye taking down the closed sign for the temple.

Within an hour, the place was full.


	87. Omake: Amy, keeper of knowledge

**Omake Chapter: Amy, keeper of knowledge.**

**1800hrs, 2 March 2013, Tokyo, Japan.**

_"With water as the basis, the spirit becomes like water. Water adopts the shape of its receptacle, it is sometimes a trickle and sometimes a wild sea." Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of the Five Rings._

_"Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions." Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking._

* * *

"Amy…Amy…."

The voice brought her back to reality. Amy couldn't really remember what was going on in the dream, but it had to do something with dungeons and a dungeon keeper and defeating some Zarekos guy…

"Amy, wake up."

That snapped her head off her physics textbook and almost into Serena, who was standing over her.

"Whoa, watch it there!" Serena said with a smile.

"Serena…? Oh, hi." Amy took a second to remember what the hell she was doing again. She had been helping that idiot of a friend Serena out with some of her homework, and then everything had gone black. Amy looked around at her surroundings; she was in her house, which was predominately Western style. She had been studying at the kitchen table, her textbooks spread all about along with Serena's. It wasn't too terribly hard to tell their work apart, since Serena's was the one that was extremely easy.

"You fell asleep there for a second."

"Sorry about that, I'm really tired. It's been a long week, and Mom has been more stressed than usual."

"Anything you want to talk about?"

"Nah, she's been just overworked. Something to do with the Nakanishi Group taking ownership of the hospital or something like that. She really doesn't like that."

Serena leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. "Can't say I blame her, but it hasn't been on the news recently. Like, you mom is one of the best doctors in the country, and that would at least raise some waves…right?"

"Who do you think controls the media here, Serena?" Amy said back, giving her a look.

"Guess you have a point."

"Anyway…was there anything else that you needed help with?"

Serena looked very unhappy that Amy had brought them back onto topic, but that's just how Amy rolled.

"I can't get this problem here. Can you help me with it?"

Amy took Serena's book and read the problem.

"When F(x) = x^2, and g(x) = x – 4, what is f(g(x))? Then, what is g(f(x))?"

Okay, that's pretty easy, Amy thought to herself.

"You see this? When the function "f" of "x" is equivalent to x raised to the fourth power, and when "g" of "x" is x minus four, you put "f" into "g", and you get…?"

She looked at Serena, hoping that explanation would be enough. The blank look told her that it wasn't.

"Let's do this step by step then. So, write out "x^2."

Serena did so.

"What does the equation say about this then?"

"Um…" Serena squinted at the problem; the numbers and letters were all blending together, and it just didn't make any damn sense to her. "I…uh…"

She put down (x^2)(x-4) = x^2-4x^2.

"Serena, we're not multiplying them together," Amy sighed, realizing that this was such an Sisyphean task that it might take them hours just to get through this one problem. "Think of it this way. When you get those pork buns you like so much…"

"Okay." That got Serena's attention.

"What's inside of them?"

"Well, pork, of course. And the sauce, and the other spices and maybe vegetables."

"That's how this equation is going to work. We put "g" into "f". "G" is the pork, and "f" is the bun."

Serena squinted some more…then it finally hit her.

"Oh, I see!" She started writing furiously. After she was done, the output looked like this;

(x-4)^2 = (x-4)(x-4)

"Very good. Now simplify that equation."

More writing.

(x-4)(x-4) = x^2 -4x -4x +16 = x^2 -8x+16.

"See? That wasn't hard at all," Amy said with a slight smile. Even if you are a dumbass, there's still some hope for you after all. Well, that's what friends are for, right?

"I get it! I get it!" Serena clapped her hands together and flashed a bigger smile at Amy. "So the other part of the problem would be…"

g(f(x)) = x^2 -4.

"That was easy!"

"Now do the rest of your homework," Amy chided, trying to keep the very excited Serena back on task.

For once, Serena seemed actually into her homework, mainly because she knew she could finally do it, and that after finishing it, she would get some of those pork buns Amy had been going on about in her analogy. Mmmm…

* * *

Ding dong. The doorbell rang. It was probably Lita, coming over to study as well.

"I got it," Amy said.

She got up from the table from she was studying and walked over to the front door.

"Evening, Lita."

"Evening." Lita slipped off her shoes at the door and walked on in.

"Is that…?" She looked surprised to see Serena actually studying for a change.

"What did you do to her?" she whispered to Amy, continuing to stare at the furiously writing Serena.

"I just compared some of the math problems to sticky buns, and she completely got into it."

"I can hear you two over there," Serena said.  
Lita and Amy gave each other a look, then giggled at her.

"What did I do?" Serena asked, glaring at the two of them.

"Well, you're studying! And doing actual work for a change."

"I want sticky buns!" she protested back. "I know you have them in your fridge, Amy."

There was no placating this girl, Amy thought to herself. "Alright. You win. Are you finished with your work?"

"I've just got one more problem."

"Okay, I'll start heating up…"

"Don't worry about that, I'll take care of it."

Amy was about to protest, but Lita was so much better at cooking than she was.

"They're on the top shelf. Mom brought them home last night."

"Good."

Lita didn't like to reheat those sticky buns, because they were better off fresh and consumed right away. However, Serena didn't really care, and from the looks of it, Amy didn't either.

"Oh well." Lita went to the fridge and pulled out the sticky buns. They were in an plastic bag, and despite being a day old, they looked pretty fresh.

"Where do you think she got them?" Lita asked Amy, popping them in the microwave on a plate and setting the time. A couple of minutes should do it.

"Probably from one of her work events. They always give out free food and stuff, and since she's one of the more high ranking doctors…"

"I get it. You don't have to spend much on food," Lita joked.

That made Amy smile. "Yeah. I guess so." She wondered where her mother was at this time…probably on the wards again, doing her thing. Amy hoped that she could live up to her reputation.

Back on topic, she though. "Okay, what do you need help with today?"

"Well, it's this history problem...thing."

Lita pulled a folder out of her backpack and took a piece of paper out of it. She handed it to Amy, who took a brief glance at it.

"Write a five paragraph essay concerning the defining characteristics of the Taisho era in Japanese History." The rest of the problem detailed how the essay should be formatted and the types of rare kanji that might crop up in their research.

Beep beep. The microwave stopped, and Lita pulled the sticky buns out of the microwave, bringing them over to the table where Amy and Serena were now sitting. Serena immediately snapped one of the buns up and devoured it, while Amy merely nibbled on hers.

"Well, we've got a couple of things. Let's set up an outline so that we can better organize our thoughts."

Amy brought her new tablet computer out, much to Lita's surprise.

"What is that thing?"

That surprised Amy; the iPad was a very common piece of technology and almost everyone Amy knew had one…everyone except Lita apparently.

"It's an iPad. A portable tablet computer and stuff."

"Like a microcomputer?"

"This isn't the Nineties," Amy chastised, "But something like that." She wasn't going to go in the specifics with Lita.

"Anyway, so, what do you know about the Taisho period?"

"Uh…"

It wasn't looking like a great start for Lita, much to Amy's dismay. Thankfully, she recovered.

"Well…there was that Prime Minister guy…uh…he had that one slogan. Something about being a PM and a commoner at the same time."

"Yes. And his name was?"

"Uh…Hara…Hara…Hara something or the other."

"Hara Takashi."

"Yeah, that's the one!"

"Mmm-hmm." Amy made some notes in the outline and continued on with her questioning. "So, what else was going on the world?"

Lita rocked her chair back and forth for a second before answering. "World War One…I think."

"Yes, and what side were we on?"

"Er…" Even within Japanese textbooks, there was still controversy about certain things. While WWI was not a particular point of contention, war was still avoided and/or downplayed significantly. WWII on the other hand…

"We were on the side of the Allies, or Entente. What else do you know?"

"Um…the earthquake?"

"Yes, the Kanto earthquake of 1923." It seemed like Lita had reached the end of her knowledge, but it seemed a good place to stop anyway. "Well, I think that's enough to start on anyway. The Taisho era started in 1912 and ended in 1926, and we've covered some of the more basic elements of the era. So…"

Amy held up her tablet computer and showed it Lita.

"Start with an outline like this, and fill in the blanks in the events you haven't mentioned. I think the school's library website…"

"I brought some of the books home from the library though…"

"Well then, get to it!"

"Geez, so forceful." Lita took a look at the outline and drew one up of her own on some paper, and within thirty minutes, she had completed the outline and the first two paragraphs.

"Ah, so beautiful," she said, looking up from her handiwork. Amy peered over at her paper, after helping Serena out on some more homework, this time, in biology.

"You've only done two paragraphs," she commented, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, well, I'll get it done tomorrow."

"Uh-huh."

"What, you don't trust me?" Lita mocked.

"Right."

"Hey, you need to not be such a hardass all the time, you know?"

Lita pondered for a second what to do next.

"I've got a great idea. Let's go up to your room and have a look around or something."

Before Amy could protest, Lita had jumped up from her chair and fled up the stairs to Amy's room.

* * *

Lita looked around in Amy room for a second. She looked at her Western-style bed, and saw that the usually perfectly made bed was somewhat messed up, including the pillows.

Hehe, I think I know where Amy keeps her secret diary. Peeking under the pillow, there was a little notebook. Curiously, Lita opened up the notebook and read the contents.

* * *

All that was written on the page were these words;

"You should really keep your eyes to yourself, Lita."

* * *

Lita whipped around and saw Amy standing in the doorway, trying not to laugh.

"Goddammit Amy!"

"You're welcome," she said, still trying to cover her laugh.

"You really gave me a fucking scare there!"

Amy shrugged her shoulders and leaned against the doorframe. "I'm just kidding, jeez."

Lita sighed and plopped the book back onto the bed.

"Thanks for helping me out on my homework today. I don't know what I would have done without you."

Amy shrugged again. "Hey, that's what I'm here for. No problem at all."

"Yeah, thanks!"

Serena appeared behind Amy and flung her arms around her in a big embrace. That certainly took her by surprise, and caused Lita to blush. She didn't know why she was blushing though…

"So, you got any movies or video games or something like that up here? Or do you just study all the goddamn time?"

"Well, I do study a lot…"

"You're such a killjoy, Amy," Serena joked. "Of course, I wouldn't think a studious girl like you would have that _Transformers _movie over there on your desk."

Lita turned her head at the desk, and sure enough, there was the movie in a DVD case. The "newest" one wouldn't come out for another year, but in the meanwhile, they could still enjoy copious amounts of violence and action that the film provided.

"I didn't know you liked _Transformers._ Or any of that stuff, for that matter."

Amy really didn't want to admit that, and ended up stuttering an answer. "I…uh…"

"It's okay," Serena said with a smile. "You're just like everyone else then!"

Lita joined in persuading her. "Come on, let's watch it."

"Guys…" Amy tried to protest, but it was kind of a futile gesture. Within a minute, Serena had popped the movie into her laptop computer on her desk, and all of them flopped down on Amy's bed to watch the horrifyingly bad, but enjoyable, film. At least there were good explosions and all, and that seemed to be the standard cure-all for bad acting and plot.

Amy smiled, glad that she had friends like these.


	88. Omake: Serena, bringer of serenity

**Omake Chapter: Serena, bringer of serenity. **

**1200hrs, 8 January 2012, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan.**

_"In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things."_ _Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of the Five Rings._

_"A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea." Honore de Balzac._

* * *

"Are you sure you want to do this…? I mean, we could be…"

"Amy, give it a rest!" Serena and Amy were in the Takeshita Street, Shibuya Ward of Tokyo, about to visit the variety of shops and gawk at the cosplayers who had gathered there on Sundays, as they usually did. They would then make their way to Omotesando Street and look at all the fancy stores that they would never be able to purchase stuff from. At least they could dream…

"Where is he…where is he…?" Serena fumbled for her mobile phone and entered her password on the welcome screen.

"Oh…looks like Mamoru-chan is going to be a little bit late." She was a little bit disappointed, but with his level of studies, he was always occupied.

"I've never seen this place before…" Amy said in a hushed tone, looking at some cosplayers in Gothic Lolita outfits stroll by.

That snapped Serena out of looking at her phone for a second. "Wait, you've NEVER been here? Amy, you really need to get out more."

"Well, it's just that I study…"

"That's the whole goddamn point," Serena continued. "Next thing you know, half your life is gone and you've studied it all away. Or worse, worked it all away for some massive company. Like the Nakanishi Group or something like that."

Amy looked down at her feet, somewhat embarrassed for Serena. It was good that she took life one step at a time, but she had no plan, no prospect for the future if she continued to act that way. Whatever.

"Okay, well, Mamoru is going to meet us in front of that Gap store or whatever it's called in about hour or so." Serena continued to poke at her smartphone, looking through the barrage of texts. After another minute or so of that, she tossed the phone quite roughly into her purse and grabbed Amy by the hand.

"We won't get anything done standing here, so let's go!"

* * *

Serena ran up to the first stall that came to view past the famous Takeshita Dori sign, a minimalist/abstract/weird frog looking thingy. On festivals or important events during the year, the sign would be decorated accordingly; they still hadn't taken down the Christmas decorations, but no one really seemed to care all that much.

"Hey! We've got a great sale on all our stuff today!" a hawker for the stall yelled out of the din of the crowd there.

"Coming through!" Serena yelled at the top of her lungs, steamrolling a couple of cosplay girls dressed in sera fuku uniforms. They looked vaguely similar to Serena and company, but no matter.

"Look at these, Amy!" She held up a couple of _SpongeBob Squarepants_ themed socks. "Aren't they so cute!"

"Uh…" They really weren't Amy's style.

"You don't like?" Serena pouted. "Okay, here's another one!" They were Naruto themed, this time.

"Look, Serena…"

"I know, one of these!"

She spent the next five minutes basically tearing the stall apart until the owner shooed them away, annoyed that practically every item had been displaced in some way, shape or form.

"Serena, you tore up that poor woman's stall!"

"Eh, they'll get over it. I bought, like, 500 yen worth of stuff from there!"

"That's doesn't even begin to cover the cost of labor and restocking and…"

"You see!" Serena poked Amy. "This was what I was talking about! You need to just chill and let go!"

"But I…"

"Stop thinking and let's go!" Before she knew it, Amy was being dragged by Serena to the next stall, which they would invariably trash as well.

* * *

After wandering around some more, they ended up arguing which place to eat (and wait for Mamoru) for lunch. It was between McDonalds and the café across from it, Noa Cafe. It was finally decided when they discovered that they had waffles and breakfast hour ended at 1300. It was 1245.

"And what would you like to drink?" the cheery waitress said to them as the two of them perused through the menu. Everything looks so good, Serena thought to herself as pictures of waffles, crepes, sandwiches, desserts and salads greeted her from the menu.

"I'll take the crème coffee," Amy said, looking at the drinks menu. Might as well…mom gave me some extra spending money, so I'll treat myself today.

Serena wasn't feeling all that much in the drinks department, so she decided on something simple. "I think I'll take just the green tea, thanks."

"I'll be right back with those." The waitress scurried off, cheerfully humming the theme from _Angel Beats!_

Amy watched the waiter go before launching into idle chatter. "So…how long and Mamoru been going out?"

Serena got a dreamy look in her eyes as she remembered the good times. "It's been about a year or so."

"How did you guys meet…?"

"Hmm…that's a good question," Serena smiled. "Quite honestly, I kinda forgot."

"You forgot?!" Amy exclaimed, almost knocking over the waiter as she returned with the drinks.

"Sorry about that."

"No problem." The waitress had been through worse, and taking care of a bunch of high school girls that behaved themselves was probably the easiest job she could ask for. She put the tea by Serena and the crème coffee by Amy.

"Okay, what would you like to order?"

"Uh…" Serena hadn't had much time to look at the menu despite looking it over beforehand; the conversation with Amy had distracted her from the juicy pictures. It didn't take very long to discover what she wanted.

"I'll take the Chocolate Banana Waffles, please!"

"By itself or the set?"

"The set!"

"No problem. The drink comes with the set, so I'll just add that in there for you. Salad, toasted bread and boiled egg?"

"Yeah, that sounds great!" The more food for Serena, the happier she was. She had ways of working off the fat…and all of them involved her boyfriend. The waitress scribbled that down in her notepad.

"And for you…?" She meant Amy.

"I'll take the Strawberry Waffles, please. The set as well."

"Uh-huh." More scribbling in her notepad. "Okay. Same as your friend over there?"

"Yes please."

"Right. I'll have that right out for you."

She scurried off again, this time humming the first theme from _Guilty Crown._

"So, what were we talking about…?"

"We were talking about how you don't remember how you and Mamoru met."

"Oh yeah! About that…" Serena gave an embarrassed smile, because she truly forgotten at the moment how they had met. "Oh well."

"Jeez, and they say men have bad memories when it comes to that kind of stuff."

"Yeah, well, that's what you get when you have a friend like me…" Serena's head drooped with that statement.

Amy gave Serena a look. That statement was uncharacteristically out of sync with the normal Serena she had come to know. She tried to recover, giving her apologies.

"Look, I didn't mean anything was wrong..."

"No, it's okay Amy," Serena said back, recovering her spirited self. "Me and Mamoru are doing just fine. We have a bright future together and all. At least, I think."

More self-doubt.  
"Is everything alright, Serena?" Amy asked. This was heading into creepy zone, and if something was going on behind the scenes, then she was there to help. And besides, if Serena went bonkers, she would probably lose one of her few friends at the moment.

"Yeah…everything's just fine!" There was something there, but Amy just couldn't get through. Oh well, probably just overthinking it, like I always do, she thought to herself.

"Your waffles, ladies."

That certainly a surprise for the two of them, especially for Serena.

"Wow, that was fast." The kitchen was on a roll today, apparently.

The waitress gave Serena a look, somewhat (mock) insulted that her speed was not appreciated.

"I mean, uh…"

"What she means, is thank you," Amy interrupted.

"Yeah! Thanks!"

"You're certainly most welcome." The plates were set in front of them, and for the last time, the waitress scurried off, humming the theme to _Lucky Star._

"Wow, this looks all so delicious!" Serena exclaimed, forgetting her previous faux pas and concentrating on the food in front of them. The Chocolate Banana waffles were drizzled in a light sauce, with a huge dollop of whipped topping almost burying the two waffles submerged in the chocolaty creamy goodness. It was the same case for the Strawberry waffles, except that they were drenched in a heavy berry glaze, topped with the same suffocating whipped topping that was going to be a serious challenge to the two of them.

"Itadakimasu!" Amy and Serena chanted, digging into their meals. There was much chewing and munching, rather than talking. When it came down to devouring the savory goodness that was Chocolate Banana and Strawberry waffles, who wouldn't want to have a nice piece of these anyway?

"That was…"

"…awesome." Serena had to stifle a small belch, but it was totally worth it. The waitress came back, and from the looks of it, the meal had been thoroughly enjoyed.

"Well, would you care for anything else?" she chuckled.

Serena was seriously considering it when she felt her mobile buzz. She checked it, and sure enough, it was Mamoru. He was about five minutes out.

"I don't think so," she said politely to the waitress. "Just the bill please." Serena held up the phone to Amy, who nodded

"Sure. I made sure they were separate." She handed them their respective bills.

"Thanks!" They took the separate checks and placed the required cash amount on them. Unlike some other countries, where magical plastic cards made all debts go away (well, at least temporarily), many Japanese people still preferred to use cash rather than to charge it. The reasoning was that you probably shouldn't spend what you don't have, and in the recession economy, that was quite the case. The waitress came back with their paid bills and returned the change to their respective owners.

"Please come and visit us again!" was the typical farewell from a business establishment (especially so in Japan), but Serena and Amy were out the door and down the street before the waitress knew it.

* * *

"Mamoru! You're finally here!"

He was walking out of the Harajuku train station entrance, looking as sharp and snazzy as usual. Amy could see why she was dating him; everything about Mamoru seemed completely perfect.

Lucky girl, Amy thought to herself.

Of course, crossing the street anywhere other than the designated crosswalk was highly frowned upon in Japan (except in Osaka, then you could do whatever the hell you wanted to), so there was about another minute where Mamoru made his way through the heavy pedestrian traffic and across the street to where Amy and Serena were standing.

Serena wasted no time jumping into the arms of her beloved. The impact made him stagger for a second, but he quickly recovered. For a quick second, she thought she could smell a different scented perfume on him, but she chalked it up to Amy, who was kinda funky smelling at times…

"I am?" Amy gave a confused look at Serena.

She briefly brought her head up from the massive embrace that she was currently engaged in. "You spend a good amount of time in the pool, Amy, when you're not studying!"

"Oh…well, all that chlorine does tend to…"

"Yeah, anyway…" Serena focused her attention back on Mamoru.

"I'm so glad you could come today."

"Not a problem, babe. Had to get away from that studying, you know? Can't spend my entire life at the books."

"See, Amy? This guy knows what he's talking about."

Mamoru smiled nervously at Amy, who looked kinda dejected at that . "It's okay," he whispered to Amy, trying to cheer her up. "I'm sure you'll do fine."

He pointed a finger down a Serena's head. "Unlike her," he mouthed. That brought a stifled chortle from Amy.

"So…what should we do now, Meatball-head?"

"Mamoru!" She shoved him gently, as the nickname was slightly embarrassing. But like all things, she had grown accustomed to it.

"We should look at the GAP store first, and then…"

* * *

The rest of the afternoon was spent window shopping at the fancy places on Ometesando, starting out at the GAP, and moving onto high end shops like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Zara, Prada, and everything in between. It was a girl's best dream come true, minus the actual buying part, but hey, the thrill of the hunt was more important than the kill, right? Of course, that depended on your view of consumerist economy and the "traditional" role of women in society, to which Japan had a spotty reputation on and...

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what…?" Mamoru asked, distractedly.

"Never mind." Serena swore she could hear someone babbling on about the Japanese economy and something or the other. Whatever.

"Hey."

"What?"

Serena turned her head to face Mamoru, to which she was clinging onto tightly. Amy was in the far distance, trying not to become a third wheel, although she figured that point was long past and she was seriously thinking about going home and doing some more studying. It was nice and all, looking at these two lovers, but school was tomorrow after all.

"You good?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good."

He hugged her a bit tighter, warming her body from the cold air that rushed all around them in the big city. His manliness and strength gave her comfort and happiness, and she was glad for that.

"Hey, Meatball-head."

"Hmm?"

"I'm so glad to have a girl like you."

Serena felt a wave of peace and calm wash over her; whatever doubts she had been having earlier in the day had been swept away in the embrace of her boyfriend. She wished she could stay here forever, clinging onto the warmth, the kindness, the strength of Mamoru Chiba. It was a most glorious feeling, one that brought tranquility and stability to an otherwise hectic and busy life.

It was going to be alright.


	89. Omake: Mina, preserver of love

**Omake Chapter: Mina, preserver of love.**

**1200hrs, 9 July 2011, York, England, United Kingdom.**

_"People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment."_ _Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of the Five Rings._

_"Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding." Dinah Craik_

* * *

"And this was where the some of the Viking material was located on the dig back in 1976," one of the prerecorded messages the narrator was speaking as the ride went around the ancient Viking village. Mina Aino was in the Jorvik Viking Centre in York, England, taking a trolley car around the excavation site. Her class was taking a field trip to visit York over the weekend, and it was a nice way to wrap up what they had been learning in history class as of late. The joys of public school, for those who could afford such an education.

Mina sat back in the trolley car and took a deep breath in…and almost threw up because they had just passed by one of the privies that people of the era…er…relieved themselves in.

"Nice one, Mina," one of her classmates, Chelsea Dunn said to her, laughing and covering her nose at the same time. She was a brunette, with a full figure and a personality just as chipper as Mina's, which made her the perfect match. She also went on and on about her sister being a police officer or something like that until it was pointed out that she was a "Police Community Support Officer," which was something completely different. That, and how it was the "police service" not the "police force." That was too aggressive.

"Go to hell," she shot back, in jest.

The theme-park-esque ride ended and all of the passengers got out of the trolley, stumbling back into the conveniently placed gift shop at the top of the stairs. Mina wondered how the hell they could get away with selling the huge swords, axe and knives in the gift shop, but it all came down to the same thing; more money for whoever ran this damn place. Whatever.

"Alright class," their teacher, Mr. Hollingsworth, said to them. He was near the exit of the store, about to go have a quick smoke. "Ten minutes in here and then meet outside the store."

"Mina, hey, look!" Chelsea nudged her in the direction of the cash register.

"Huh?"

The young man that Chelsea was directing Mina toward was just checking out with a purchase of some trinkets, followed by a gaggle of schoolgirls, all vying for his attention.

"That's Tommy Jenkins! He's really cute."

He was with short, cropped blonde hair that matched Mina's, muscular chest that would have made any fashion magazine sell like hotcakes, and a white smile that accentuated his blue eyes. The clerk at the desk, an older woman in her fifties, was swooning over him and gave him a fifty percent discount on his purchase.

He wasn't all that impressive to Mina though.

"What about him?" she said, dismissively. Those types of guys were all style and no substance. Being captain of the rugby team didn't make him any more special than the other pretty boys at her school.

"Well…he's just so handsome!"

"Yeah. Just like everyone else."

"Oh come on, Mina! I know your reputation." Chelsea gave a wink wink, nudge nudge, motion to Mina.

Mina simply just glared at Chelsea.

"That was only one time…"

Chelsea gave her a look right back. Mina sighed and gave up.

"Okay, maybe a couple more times…but really. I don't sleep around."

"See? Then why haven't you shacked up with Tommy then?"

"You seem awfully interested in him. Why don't YOU go and introduce yourself to him…"

"Well…you see…"

"Okay everyone!" Mr. Hollingsworth interrupted. "Time to get a move on!"

Grateful that the topic had now changed, Mina and Chelsea followed the gaggle of students out of the gift shop and toward the road, where they would meet the tour bus that would take them to yet another sight, York Minister.

Except that the tour buses weren't there, and since the Jorvik center was pretty much self-explanatory, the tour guides had decided not to come as well. Which meant that they had no idea how to get to the Abby…well, with smartphones, that could be easily remedied, but you try shepherding seventy teenage girls and boys through an unfamiliar town and see how well that goes.

"Okay everyone, just sit tight for a second…" Mr. Hollingsworth got out his mobile and dialed the tour guides. "What do you mean the Minister is closed? You still need to pick us up! Yes, I understand the union doesn't allow for more than a certain amount of hours for driving, but you don't need to take a break! Jesus…"

He covered the phone and shouted out to the gaggle of students gathered by the roadside.

"Hey! We're having a slight problem with the buses, so if you want to go into the gift shop again or wander around for a bit, then go right ahead. But don't wander too far off, please!"

He returned to yelling at the tour guides, who seemed to be in no rush for anything.

* * *

"Hey, Mina…" She turned to see Chelsea holding her stomach.

"What's wrong? " Mina asked. "Was it something you ate?"

"Nah…it's…my period."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"I'm going to pop into the chemists' over there." Chelsea gestured with her head toward a Boots chemist shop. "I'll be right back."

"Okay." Mina watched Chelsea scurry across the street to the chemists', leaving her alone on the sidewalk.

"Well, this is interesting," she sarcastically muttered to herself. She pulled out her mobile from her purse and checked to see if she had any SMSs from anybody…just her mum. Nothing too special, just the usual "how are you?", coupled with the response from Mina, "I'm fine mum, everything is alright here."

"What's that you're doing?"

Mina snapped her head up to see that boy again. This time, he was standing in front of her, smiling brilliantly.

"I'm…just checking my SMSs." Mina put the phone away in her purse and focused her attention on Tommy.

"Name's Tommy Jenkins. Nice to meet you." He held out his hand for Mina to shake.

"Mina. Mina Aino." She returned the favor.

"So…" he looked at her, with those brilliant blue eyes. "You're not from here, are you?"

"No, I'm from Japan."

He stared at her hair, an obvious contradiction in her origins. "Why do you have blonde hair then?"

"Well…it's a long story, and…"

"Hey guys, what's up?"

Another one of his mates came running up, probably after buying some more shit from the gift shop.

"Oh hi there. Mina, this is Mike."

"Nice to meet you."

"We were just talking about where Mina is from."

"Uh-huh. So, where are you from?"

"Japan…" Mina didn't exactly want to repeat herself, but the conversation seemed to be amicable.

"Hey…you're Japanese too? That's awesome, I'm half-Japanese myself."

That got her attention. "What…?"

"Yeah, my last name is Otanaru!"

"What a coincidence then," Mina said to him. "How did you get here?"

"Well, my dad works for the ICPO…"

"The what?"

"ICPO. Interpol."

"So he goes around and arrests people."

Mike shook his head at that. "Nah. They don't have that sort of power. He's a local liaison with the Met, and it's a pretty sweet job at that. Right now, we're looking for this one girl, named "V" or something like that, and she's been…"

He stopped in midsentence.

"Uh…I probably shouldn't be talking about cases, so if you would kindly ignore that…"

Mina rolled her eyes at the reference. "Mike, this isn't _Bioshock_."

"Dammit. I had to try." He smiled awkwardly, but it was a genuine smile. It wasn't as brilliant as Tommy's, but this one was more humble and kind. The other smile was to impress and dazzle, this one was just to show kindness and maybe a little bit of embarrassments. Speaking of which…where did that guy go anyway?

"I dunno," was the response from Mike. "He does that sometimes, but he'll be back."

* * *

From a nearby alleyway, Chelsea was watching the two of them converse naturally and happily. A tap on the shoulder caused her to turn around; it was Tommy, a little bit winded from trying to stay hidden and get away from those two at the same time quickly, but he had accomplished his mission.

"Nice one," Chelsea said, giving Tommy a tenner. "I always knew that those two would be a good match." Tommy pocketed the banknote and pulled out a pack of smokes.

"Care for one?" he said, offering the pack to Chelsea.

She shook her head. "Nah. I would take it, but then my mum would pick it up in a second."

"The scent?"

"No, the habit again. She quit awhile ago, so…"

"Ah." Tom shrugged and lit up, puffing away at the Benson cigarette.

"It's too bad really," he said after a little bit, watching Mike and Mina babble happily away."

Chelsea gave him a confused look. She wasn't going to like where this was going. "Wait…what?"

"She's leaving. I heard from one of my dad's friends; they're transferring back to the Japanese branch of the company soon."

"Oh." Chelsea looked down, dejected. " But she's never told me about that…"

"Probably doesn't want to upset you."

"I know…it's just that…we've become good friends, you know?"

Tommy just shrugged. He didn't have much of an answer for her, but that's just how life was.

* * *

It was nearly an hour before the buses came back again. Mr. Hollingsworth was furious then, yelling at the tour guides and bus drivers for their tardiness and having smoked about three packs of cigarettes in nervousness. The tour guides finally gave up and handed him a twenty pound note to go buy more cigarettes.

"Well, everyone," Mr. Hollingsworth said over the bus PA system, finally happy that he had more cigarettes, "We're heading back to the hostel soon, then back to London for us tomorrow. I'm terribly sorry about not being able to see York Minister, but oh well I guess."

Mina was sitting next to Chelsea, going over the conversation she had just had with Mike. He was certainly a nice guy…but from the conversation, he had outright told her that he had a girlfriend in Russia that would be transferring in next semester.

She sighed loudly.

"What's wrong, Mina?" Chelsea nudged. "Wasn't Mike good enough?"

"Yeah…yeah he was. But he's got a girlfriend already."

How the hell did that part slip by?! Chelsea thought to herself. Dammit, she was going to have a talk with Tommy about this when they got back to London.

"Oh…that's too bad. Say…"

"Hmm?" was the distracted response from Mina. She was still going over the conversation in her head.

"Are you moving back to Japan…?"

Mina opened her mouth for a second, unable to find the words to say to her.

"Yeah. I'm moving back to Japan." She looked down in her seat.

"Why didn't you tell me?! We've been friends for a year now!"

"Look, I didn't want to worry you…"

"Well, now you've got me really worried! Jesus, Mina…"

There was a very uncomfortable silence as the two of them tried to come up with something to say.

"Mina…don't go."

"I don't have much of a choice in the matter. I'm sorry."

Chelsea broke down in tears, much to the embarrassment and sadness of Mina. There wasn't much else she could do, other than…

Mina hugged the poor girl sobbing away in the seat next to her. It wasn't exactly an odd sight, but it was something that they needed to do, as friends. They stayed that way for the entire trip.

* * *

She moved away a couple of months later, back to Japan.


	90. Omake: Goodbye, PM

**Omake Chapter: Goodbye, PM.**

**0900hrs, 31 December 2013, Tokyo, Japan**

_"Hey, hey LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" 1960s anti-war protest chant._

* * *

**The Mainichi Shimbun**

**Prime Minister Kenji Hasegawa voted out**

In a snap vote of no confidence by the Diet today, PM Kenji Hasegawa was voted out of office by an unsurprising, but overwhelming vote of 480 to 0. No abstentions, an unusual situation, and unison voting make this event an unique one in Japanese history. As per the vote, a new government was formed at the request of the Diet.

"I am truly sorry for what I have done," Kenji Hasegawa said at a press conference. "The world has suffered needlessly through part of my actions." He then bowed deeply toward the reporters and the cameras, indicating his extreme apologies toward those who had lost loved ones during the 16 December attacks.

When pressed further by reporters, Mr. Hasegawa said that, "Mistakes were made, and I allowed for a company to rule over Japan with absolute tyranny and control. For that, I subverted a free and democratic system, and I endangered millions of people around the world for no good reason other than the sake of profit."

Kenji Hasegawa was selected as Prime Minister after frontrunner Takashi Hino was disgraced after a series of sex scandals erupted in early 2012. He resigned his post from the DPJ and went into isolation. Hasegawa, then a vice president of the party, was suddenly thrust onto the scene in 2012 during the succession crisis, and was judged to be the least politically unstable of the candidates.

Hasegawa and his wife Miko, were also victims of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, where they lost their only daughter, Yuna, aged fifteen, when she was swept away on a field trip in Miyagi Prefecture, and was presumed dead.

Sources from inside the LDP and the DPJ have stated that Takashi Hino, the disgraced frontrunner for the DPJ, is being courted by both sides due to his experience, but also his self-imposed isolation from politics for the last two years. The reasoning behind the LDP courting such favor with a politician form the other side of the isle is unknown, presumably to gain insights to the DPJ, to which the LDP has lost many of its seats in the Diet.

"We can neither confirm nor deny that we are in negotiations with Mr. Hino," said a spokesman for the DPJ. "However, we can say that he is planning to make a return to politics." The LDP had no comment to offer to the Mainichi Shimbun.


	91. Omake: The doctor is in

**Omake Chapter: The doctor is in.**

**1640hrs, 10 April 2006, Tokyo, Japan.**

_"Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there also is love of humanity." Hippocrates._

* * *

It had been a long day at Saeko Mizuno's rotation; she had been seeing patients all day and it was about time she could go home and relax…perhaps see her pride and joy, Amy, play in the piano recital this evening, but she had missed so many of those as of late. It was the nature of the job, anyway. That loser of a "husband"…no, he wasn't even deserving of that name, was somewhere off in the middle of the Japanese countryside, painting his life away. Of course, he was ignoring his daughter, just like she was. I guess we're not all that different, after all, she thought to herself as she got ready to see her last appointment of the day.

* * *

"Hello Hotaru! How are you doing today?"

The fact of the matter was, she wasn't. Born three weeks early, she had a series of medical problems that made even the most hardened doctor tear up upon looking at her charts. She had a bad heart, with Cardiac Dysrhythmia making her heart beat strangely…sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. This in turn led to hypotension, in which she could not properly circulate blood sometimes. More ailments followed; Hyperthyroidism, which led to the prevalence of Graves ' disease, also forced her to take more medication for that as well. In addition, she had acute asthma and had been hospitalized several times in her short life for attacks of said aliment. All of these afflictions meant that she was unable to join in the playful activities that many of her peers were able to engage in. And to top it all off, She was allergic to peanuts, cats, grapefruit and gorilla glue, of all things.

It really sucked to be Hotaru Tomoe, then.

"Ms. Tomoe, thanks for bringing her in today. I know that it must be tough on you…but…"

Ms. Tomoe nodded in thanks. "I understand. My husband, Souichi…you know him, right? He's really busy, but he sends his thanks."

Dr. Mizuno bent down to look at the frail child in front of her. She was twelve years old, but looked so small that one could easily mistake her for being four years younger. She wore a black choker with a black turtleneck with a plated blue skirt…it was all so depressing. The chart from the preliminary check from the nurse had said nothing too terribly bad; BP was 70/110. It was somewhat low, but it was certainly an improvement over the last time she was there. Temperature…37.5 degrees Celsius, a little bit high, maybe she had a slight infection somewhere. Heart rate, was normal, again, for someone with her condition.

"Hi Mizuno-sensei!" she said back, trying to gather strength to be cheerful. At least the attitude didn't match the clothing, or her health in general.

"Glad to see you! Let's get up on the exam table, shall we?"

"Okay!" She scrambled up to the table, which had a new sheet of sterile paper for the patient to lie down on, with a small pillow at the end.

Dr. Mizuno did a quick visual inspection of the child. There was no apparent disease or afflictions present; no bruising of her extremities, some minor scratches, her eyes were slightly red from allergies but that wasn't anything unusual.

"Is your head hurting you or anything?"

"No!" was the excited response. Dr. Mizuno continued on with her exam, checking the eyes briefly (that would come later on in the exam), looking for any external rashes or abrasions, then looking for any signs of internal injuries, like bruising. Finding nothing, Dr. Mizuno wrote the fantastical word "Normocephalic" out on her chart…which meant that her head was a-okay.

"Okay, I'm going to look in your ears."

Dr. Mizuno went over to the wall where most of the standard equipment was mounted on the wall; one tool for looking at the ears, an Ophthalmoscope, one examination light for looking in the mouth and eyes, an Otoscope, with disposable covers for the said instrument right near the Otoscope as well. They were black and cone shaped, and several rows of depleted covers indicated that Dr. Mizuno had been very busy today. Other instruments next to the Otoscope and Ophthalmoscope was a blood pressure cuff, and a place for disposing biohazard waste (used needles, bandages, etc).

Dr. Mizuno picked up the Otoscope from the wall mount, and it automatically turned on. She slipped a plastic cover on it and took a peek into Hotaru's left ear. Aside from a significant amount of earwax, the interior was also red.

"Oooh. Are you having some problems with your ear?"

"It kind of hurts there, Mizuno-sensei," she meekly replied. Yet another mark on her chart.

"I'll prescribe some antibiotics." Hotaru looked down at the floor, knowing that it was just another thing that was wrong with her. The chirpiness was gone now, with the barrage of medical tests that she had gone through and the upcoming ones suppressing that energy. It was something that had to be done though.

"Is the pink stuff?"

"Yeah, penicillin."

Hotaru wrinkled her nose at that. "It tastes kind of funny. I don't like it."

"Well, if it makes you feel better, I'll tell the pharmacy to add some flavoring to it."

That made her pay attention. "Really?"  
"Of course. It doesn't cost that much extra."

"That would be great! I would like bubblegum!"

Dr. Mizuno shot a look at Ms. Tomoe, who nodded her approval. She wrote down the note next to the prescription so that the pharmacy that the Tomoe family visited would flavor the medicine appropriately.

"Alright, I'm to take a listen to your lungs, okay? Lift up your shirt for me."

Hotaru did as asked, lifting up her shirt and Dr. Mizuno took a listen. Moving her stethoscope around, she listened intently to the lungs. Hotaru shuddered at the cold metal touching her skin, but at this point in her life she was used to it.

"Uh-huh…uh-huh…are you having trouble breathing again?" Dr. Mizuno noticed that every time that she took in a breath, she wheezed slightly.

"Yes, my chest has been tight."

"Have you been taking the steroids that we prescribed?"

"Yes, my mom always reminds me to take them before I go off to school each day."

"Very good." Dr. Mizuno made a note on her chart about that. They would probably have to up the dosage on her medication. Again.

Just to be sure, Dr. Mizuno brought out a funny looking device that would assess Hotaru's breathing. "Breathe into the peak flow meter here," she instructed. Hotaru took the device from Dr. Mizuno's hand and breathed into it as hard as she could. The results…could have been better. The marker that went up and down with the exhaled breath was below the green, much to everyone's disappointment. Dr. Mizuno made her do it a couple more times, just to be sure, but the result was the same.

"Thanks Hotaru," she said to the now depressed girl on the exam bed. "You're doing just fine." That at least brought some spirit back into her, and she smiled. "I'm going to listen to your heart."

Again, Hotaru complied.

Thump thump…thump thump…

"Heart sounds good. You've been taking meds for that as well, correct?"

"Like you told me too!"

"Very good." At least something was going right today; she scribbled down that despite her heart condition, she sounded good.

"Have you been exercising lightly?"

"Mmm-hmm. The gym teachers have been very nice about it."

That was very good to hear. In the face of everything, this little girl could persevere and continue on with life despite the circumstances was unbelievable, and inspiring at the same time. Despite the ear infection and asthma, she was looking much better, mainly due to the fact that Dr. Mizuno had been really good with her.

Dr. Mizuno continued on with the routine exam; the abdomen was okay, the extremities had some cuts and scratches, but that was from the normal wear and tear from a girl her age. The neurologic exam came up clear as well, with all signs pointed to a sharp and alert girl.

* * *

Finally, it was over. Dr. Mizuno finished up her charts and went over the prognosis with the two of them.

"…and you should probably get those vaccines I recommended earlier, we can't be sure in her weakened state what will happen. Some people might be able to walk off the effects of Whooping cough, but we can't take any chances. Other than that, I'll get the prescriptions in and they should be ready at your pharmacy later next week. Got it?"

Hotaru nodded excitedly. "Got it!"

"Ms. Tomoe, please make sure that your daughter takes her medications as usual, although you seem to be on top of that particular issue."

Ms. Tomoe nodded. Her eyes flickered to Dr. Mizuno, then to her daughter, then back to Dr. Mizuno.

"Hotaru, would you mind waiting outside for a second? I need to speak with Dr. Mizuno."

That surprised Dr. Mizuno for a second, but it must be important.

"Yes mom." Hotaru exited the exam room and plopped down into a seat in the waiting room, reading a magazine about some new school up north for disabled children.

There was silence for a second, but then Ms. Tomoe started speaking. "You know, my husband is working on some sort of procedure…I'm not quite sure what it is, but he says it might help ease the suffering of my daughter."

That got Dr. Mizuno's attention. She didn't know much about Dr. Tomoe, but from what she did know, he was a brilliant and gifted man. "Really? What is it?"

"I don't know. He's so secretive about those things, you know?"

"Where does your husband work again?" Dr. Mizuno asked Ms. Tomoe.

She smiled, embarrassed. "He works for the Nakanishi Group. Some biological labs, but he won't say much more than that."

"The Nakanishi Group, huh? They've been slowly making their way into the medical industry as of late," Dr. Mizuno said.

"What do you think of them?"

"To be honest, I don't know. They've been doing a lot of good for Japan, especially helping out the flagging economy…but…" Dr. Mizuno hesitated at that, trying to hide her concern.

"But?" Ms. Tomoe pressed on anyway.

"They're demanding of so much. They're looking at this hospital as of late for purchase, and I don't want the needs of the patients to go unmet in the name of profit. They just keep getting larger and larger, like a malignant tumor that eventually kills the patient."

"A tumor…? That's an interesting way of putting it."

"I'm sorry if I spoke out of line. All I know is that I don't want my daughter to grow up having a miserable life under some mega-corp, you know? Even if it does help her life…what's the point?"

"Well, that's very noble of you, Mizuno-sensei." Ms. Tomoe collected her purse and went outside to the waiting room, where Hotaru was waiting.

"Bye Mizuno-sensei!" Hotaru said, smiling brilliantly and waving to Dr. Mizuno.

"Bye, sweetie!"

They left, leaving Dr. Mizuno standing in the doorway, watching the brave little girl walk off, hand in hand with her mother. It was a very emotional sight, and she wished that with her own daughter…

Shit, what time was it? She looked at her watch, and realized that it was almost time for Amy's recital to begin at the middle school. She had been doing quite well at adjusting to the new rigors of middle school, and she hoped that she could keep it up to become a doctor like her.

"Hey, Kawasaki! Can you cover for me! I gotta go see my daughter!"

"Sure!" Dr. Kawasaki said. He was right out of medical school, and starting his internship at the hospital.

Figures, he thought. The interns get stuck with everything. Oh well, at least it was an honor to work with Dr. Mizuno, despite never seeing her most of the time, because she was so busy.

I wonder if I'll meet her daughter at some point. I don't even know what she looks like. Huh.

With that, Dr. Kawasaki went back to doing his work, finishing up some paperwork and continuing on with his shift.


	92. Omake: The Black Cannon Incident

**Omake Chapter: The Black Cannon Incident**

**0930hrs, 17 November 2013, Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, People's Republic of China**

_"Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate." Sun Tzu, The Art of War._

* * *

"SAILOR Moon, come in, over."

"Go ahead Luna, I've got you."

The three members of the SAILOR team that had been dispatched to Northeastern China from Russia were now hunkered down near Saint Sophia Cathedral, waiting for their target to show up. Serena was sitting on a bench, looking at the Cathedral, Raye was in a van parked nearby (a local production of the Toyota Hiace), while Lita was walking around the Cathedral in circles, making sure that the target would show up.

"I'm transmitting the target specifics, over." There was a slight delay in the transmission of the data, which Luna fixed quickly. The transfer speed was sure slow today…

"A Mr. Wen."

"What?" Raye asked, trying to take the conversation in a direction that probably wasn't a good one.

"No, do _not_ start that," Luna snapped at Raye.

"No, but that's the guy, we're after, right?"  
"Yes, we don't know his first name, but we do have a photograph of the person in question."

Luna sent it to their HUDs. The man was skinny, with a slightly gaunt face, measuring about…185 centimeters?

"Wow, that guy is taller than I am," Lita noted. "That'll make him easy to spot."

"That is affirmative," Luna said. "He's been working with some underground types to undermine an upcoming deal with the Nakanishi Group and another Chinese company, specializing in rare earth metals."

"The Nakanishi Group? Why would the PM send us in for something like this?"

"I don't make the policy, I just execute it," was the response.

"Alright, fine then," Serena groused, looking at the people passing her by. They didn't look too much different than herself, she thought. "Took us two weeks to find this bastard," she said over the radio to Raye. "And it turns out he's just some low level flunky who'll just lead us on up the chain."

"Hey, I had fun beating the shit out of the last guy," Raye said to her, looking at a passing SUV. It looked like one of those German ones, but it was probably a local knockoff. "He gave us the information right quick."

"And it was the wrong information, Raye," Lita pointed out, continuing her fifth loop of the Cathedral.

"Will you two knock it off?" Serena interrupted over the radio.

"No, I will not knock it off," Raye snapped back at Serena.

"Well, we need to focus on the mission at hand, and if we keep bantering on in Japanese, someone is going to notice!"

"Does it look like I give a fuck?!"

Lita just rolled her eyes and kept looking for the man they were supposed to be capturing. They would snag and bag him in a back alley somewhere, while Raye drive up in the van and drive off with everyone inside.

Suddenly, Lita saw the man come walking from the south, his head down and every once in a while, look behind himself to see if he was being followed.

"I've got eyes on target. Looks like he just came out of the KFC over there."

"They're closed at that time though…"

"Could be open for side business." What that side business entailed was not for the ears of pleasant company.

Lita stopped where she was and continued to observe the target, looking like she was checking something out on her iPhone.

"Target is still continuing north toward the Cathedral."

Mr. Wen walked a little bit further until he was about twenty meters away from the church, almost in the center of plaza that surrounded the magnificent building. He looked around again, then reached in his pocket and set something down.

"Target has set something down on the ground."

He moved away from the object and continued to walk north, bypassing the Cathedral.

"Okay, I'm going to go pick up the object. Serena…"

"I'll pick up the tail."

"Thanks."

Serena got off of the bench and fell in behind Mr. Wen, who was now casually strolling now toward the north end of the plaza and toward a park that was about half a kilometer away.

Luna's voice chirped over the radio again. "Be advised, there's a middle school nearby, avoid that area."

"Roger that."

Lita walked to the spot where the man had placed the object on the ground. She could see that it was a mobile phone…another iPhone. Some people had walked past it, but lost mobile phones were commonplace in many different areas of the world, and this was no different. Having a smartphone out in the open though, would eventually lead to it being stolen and sold for parts, or "repurposed." Lita bent down to pick up the phone, picking it off of the ground.

"Hey!" Lita looked up to see a very burly man looking at her, no more than two meters away. He was probably the courier sent to pick up the phone for its contents.

"Drop that!" he screamed in Chinese.

It was now or never time. She could comply, and lose whatever was on the phone, or fight and cause a ruckus.

"Serena, pursue the target NOW!" Lita screamed into her radio before the burly man took a swing at her.

From across the plaza, Mr. Wen turned his head to see if the person who was supposed to be picking up the phone was doing so; instead, he was treated to the sight of a very tall girl beating the ever-living shit out of that man.

Then he saw the blonde girl. She was now running toward him, full tilt, and…

Lita slammed her left fist into the attacking man's neck, and a sickening crunch told her that someone would probably not be walking again, ever. He went down, hard.

Lita shoved the phone in her pocket and immediately turned and started running in the direction of Serena, who was in full pursuit of the target.

"Raye, move!"

"Got it!" Raye accelerated from her position at the KFC across the street and made a left turn onto Zhaolin Jie, the road where the pursuit was happening.

Serena saw Wen pull out a gun. She though he was going to fire at him, but he brandished the weapon at a stopped driver at an intersection, and tossed him and the family out.

"He's hijacking a vehicle!" Serena yelled into her radio. "It's a blue…uh…Chery?" The HUD flashed the car name and model and highlighted it. The car was a Chery A3, and it was booking it down the street.

"We're on Zhaolin Jie, proceeding north!"

"I'm coming in your direction!" Raye accelerated the van and slowed down, but did not stop when she caught up to Serena and Lita.

"Get him!"

"On it!" Raye punched the accelerator and was on the man's tail in no time.

Serena hopped into the passenger's seat in the front and kept a lookout on their target. "Luna, we are in pursuit of target currently and are on Zhaolin street."

"Okay, we'll keep watch here," was the reply from Luna.

The two vehicles continued to race along at high speed down the road, dodging other vehicles and pedestrians alike.

"Luna, we're approaching Zhaolin Park!"

"Affirmative." What exactly do you want me to do about it? Luna though sarcastically. "I'll try to keep the police off of your for as long as possible." Already, there had been several calls to the police, but Luna was going to try to slow down the response times at least.

"Raye, you're a manic!"

"I know!" That response didn't make Lita feel any better. The target car suddenly made a right turn, trying to throw them off.

"Turn right, turn right!" Serena ordered at Raye.

"Hold on!" Raye engaged the handbrake and powerslid the car onto Sen Lin Jie…which was a one way street. And they were going the wrong way.

"Goddammit!" Lita held on for dear life in the back as Raye dodged the infamous Chinese traffic. She hoped that the other driver was not as skilled, but he was giving her one hell of a time. A big minibus swerved to avoid being hit by Chery, but sent them right into the path of Raye's vehicle. She swerved out of the way in time, but right into the path of another minibus, which she had to dodge that one, and then there was a couple of cars right behind it…

"Oh my god, we are so going to die," Serena muttered to herself as Raye and the other car plowed through about three hundred meters worth of heavy traffic.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" was all that Lita could mutter as she hung on for dear life.

"Making a left onto those train tracks up ahead!"

The car that they were pursuing made a rapid left onto some train tracks, after dodging all that traffic, and began to accelerate down them.

Raye prayed that there wouldn't be any trains coming their way at that moment, and stayed in close with the target.

* * *

In her P-3 Orion, Luna looked at the train schedule for the day, making sure that the SAILOR team didn't get run over. What she found was much worse.

"Advise caution, SAILOR Moon, a battalion of PRC troops are using the railroad half a click to the north, try not to get them involved."

It didn't help much.

"Say again, you're breaking up," Serena said, trying to keep her eyes on the car. "Raye, keep driving!"

"Advise caution, PRC troops are passing through on the railroad half a click to the east, over."

"Still didn't catch that. I'll get back to you!"

Luna threw up hands up in frustration, but there wasn't much she could do about it besides trying to contact them again.

On the railroad tracks, the quickly approaching Songhua river made a bad situation already worse.

"Is he..?" Lita said, looking at the river down below.

"He is. Shit." There was a railroad bridge, and Mr. Wen was going to cross over it. There was no other choice.

"I'm following him!" Raye floored the accelerator and was hot on his heels.

The minibus bounced up and down on the railroad ties, sending poor Lita in the back flying around some more before she could find something to hold onto.

"I'm going to try to shoot out the bastard's tires!" Serena yelled at Raye.

"Okay!"

Serena rolled down the passenger's side window and withdrew a Norinco Type 86S from the back, passed up by Lita. It was a bullpup rifle, and while similar to the AKM, the differences in its design and manufacture made it a unique weapon rather than just another AK knockoff. In the words of some reviewers, it's "an ugly bitch but puts outs really good."

Serena fired off a burst, but only managed to hit the trunk of the car, the bullets snapping through the cheap bodywork and into the seats inside.

"Hold her steady!" she shouted at Raye.

"Serena, we're on a fucking railroad that goes straight!" she yelled back. "How hard can it be to…"

"Just hold the car steady!" Serena repeated, irritated that Raye would talk back at a time like this. Another burst from her went wild, due to Raye hitting a particularly bad spot in the railroad ties.

"For fucks sake, Raye, can you PLEASE hold the fucking car steady!"

"I am doing my best, Serena," Raye snarled back. "It's not my goddamned fault you can't hit the broadside of the barn!"

While those two were arguing, Lita noticed a light in the distance, down the tracks.

"Wait…what is that…?" Lita said, pointing down the railroad tracks. Raye squinted for a second, then realized she could just put on her HUD and see what it came up with. The chase car was accelerating toward that train at high speed, oblivious to the fact that it was in the way.

"Oh shit…" Serena muttered. "Is that train moving?"  
"I don't…" Raye stuttered.

"Is it?!"

The train did not appear to be moving, but the way the two vehicles were moving, it was going to be hard trying to dodge a thousand-tonne train parked at the station.

* * *

"Uh, sir?" A sergeant with the PLA battalion that had just gotten into Harbin on exercises pointed to the two oncoming cars coming down the railroad tracks. "That's…"

The lieutenant he was talking to, newly minted and very excitable, had read reports of suicide bombers in Qinghai, and was determined not to be another statistic on the nightly news. That, and he had to prove himself to his unit, of which he had only been a member for two weeks.

"Clear the station!" he screamed out. "Sergeant, get your squad and prepare to engage those vehicles!"

"Sir, I don't know if that's a great idea to…"

"Do it!" The LT didn't really care about that, they could blow themselves up at the station and their loaded cargo of ammunition. The sergeant screamed at his squad to get their rifles online and to get ready to fire.

* * *

"I've got hostile contact!" Serena's HUD flashed with several PLA soldiers reading their rifles to fire. Within a few seconds, bullets zipped through the air and riddled the blue Chery in front of them. At first, it seemed like the driver had been killed, but due to the hasty aim by the PLA troops, the driver was unscathed as he opened the car door with his hands up.

"Get on the floor!" the sergeant yelled at him, almost putting a bullet in the poor man's skull right then and there.

"You guys gotta help me! They're chasing after me!" he screamed to them.

"Bullshit!" the LT screamed back.

"I'm not a suicide bomber! What do you think those guys are doing?!" Mr. Wen argued. He pointed at the minibus barreling down toward them. "Plus, I would have blown myself up right now if I was a suicide bomber, so there! Happy?"

That was all it took to convince the gullible LT.

"Focus fire on that minibus!" A stream of gunfire from assault rifles and machine guns roared toward the SAILOR team, peppering the entire vehicle with bullet holes.

"Take a left, take a LEFT!" Serena screamed at Raye as the full force of the People's Liberation Army bore down upon them. There was a small road next to the train, and if they could put the heavy train between them and the army there, they could easily escape.

Raye powerslid the minibus onto the small road, spitting up dust and gravel…

"Jesus more bridges!" It was yet another bridge leading across a tributary of the river and into Taiyangdao Park. Poor Lita was tossed about again in the back, this time landing in a weird, contorted position that would have made the _Kama Sutra_ look easy. In the confusion, the iPhone that she had picked up earlier slipped out onto the floor.

"We can lose them in there, hurry!" Serena could see that the troops behind them were recovering from their little stunt and were starting to pursue, but it would be hard with the train in the way.

Raye came to a sudden stop in a grove of trees, sending Lita flying for the last time into the back door of the minibus.

"Goddammit, everyone out! OUT!" The doors quickly opened on the minibus and the three SAILOR members piled out.

"Owww…" Lita complained.

"Shut up and toss the thermite grenade in there," Serena ordered to her. Lita rolled her eyes and took out the grenade and pulled the pin, tossing it in the back of the van.

It blew up in a blinding flash, marking their position for the PLA troops, who were already across the bridge and running toward their location.

"Let's get a move on," Serena said. "There's a mall nearby we can disappear into."

The three SAILOR members ran at full tilt toward the mall, and easily evaded the pursing soldiers and later, the police that combed the area for the intruders.

* * *

"Luna, come in, over." Serena and company were hiding out in an alleyway, safe for the time being.

"This is Luna, what took you so long, over?"

"We ran into a whole fucking battalion of PLA troops, that's what," Serena snarled into the radio. "Why didn't you tell us about them?"

"Uh, I did, and you didn't listen…"

That brought an exasperated sigh from Serena. "Okay, fine. The mission is a complete scrub. We need extraction ASAP."

"Working on it."

Luna typed in some information about flight leaving from international airport that day; there was a flight on Southern China Airlines to Narita. Perfect.

"Okay, I've got you on a flight leaving at 1800hrs from Harbin International to Narita. Get on it."

"Anything about heightened security?"

More typing on Luna's end. "Nothing on the local network. Looks like they're trying to keep this incident under wraps."

"Just the way we like it."

"Trying telling that to Iwasaki," was the dry response from Luna.

Serena groaned, knowing that was going to be a bitch to deal with once they got back. "He's pissed right now, isn't he?"

"You don't want to know. Now get to that flight."

"On it." Serena disconnected the conversation and took her sunglasses HUD off, and put it in her purse that she had snagged from a counterfeit dealer on the way out of the park.

"Okay guys, let's get rid of our weapons and high tail it out of here."

"We sure go through a lot of weapons…" Raye moaned, dissembling her Glock 26 and tossing it in a nearby trash can.

"At least we can replace them," Lita pointed out, also getting rid of her weapon as well. "Unlike us."

"What do you think Iwasaki is going to say once we get back to base?" Raye wondered, putting her HUD away as well.

"I have no idea. I think it's going to involve lots of swearing and cursing, that's for sure." Serena looked at her watch; it was 1600, and they needed to be on their way to the airport or else they were going to miss their flight.

"Got your passports?"

"Yep." Lita and Raye held up their forged passports. At least something was going well today.

"Alright. Let's get a move on." The three of them started to walk out of the alley, when Serena suddenly remembered something.

"Wait, where's the phone you picked up earlier…?" she asked Lita.

"I think I have it right here…" Lita rustled through her pockets and came up with an iPhone.

"Ah crap."

"That one's yours, isn't it."

Lita nodded.

"And the phone was in the minibus, wasn't it."

Again, Lita nodded. This was not turning out very good for anyone.

"Which was blown up. By you."

"Sorry." Lita conveniently left out the part that it was Serena who ordered her to blow up the minibus.

Serena threw up her hands in frustration. She was way beyond caring at this point; all she wanted to do now was get back to base and fall asleep.

"Come on. Let's get moving before something else goes wrong."

"Nice going, Serena," Raye quipped.

"You know, you're really getting on my nerves right now, and that's the last thing I need…"

Lita just rolled her eyes and Serena and Raye fought with each other all the way to the airport, all the way on the flight to Narita, all the way on the drive to the medical facility, and all the way to Iwasaki's office.

Things were just peachy with the SAILOR team.


	93. Omake: The Taipei Connection

**Omake Chapter: The Taipei Connection**

**0000hrs, 27 September 2013, Taipei, Taiwan**

_"Now my daughter's wedding is finished, I shall improve the economy in Taiwan." Chen Shui-bian._

_"Oh, yeah, I name all the operations that go down in Taipei. Even the ones that aren't mine! Operation Latex Turtle, Operation Angry Bees, Operation __AAAAAAAAHHH-__YOOOOOOOOOW!__ Heh. That was a good one." Stephen Heck, Alpha Protocol. _

* * *

"This is SAILOR Mercury, target has not arrived, standby."

The SAILOR team had been in Taipei for two days, scoping out the target they were supposed to intercept.

This was a big mission requested by the PM's office, and whatever the SAILOR team had been doing, had to be dropped in order for this mission to be carried out. Something dealing with a series of terrorist attacks that was going to be committed against Japanese companies and Taiwanese government buildings in the next week or so. And it was their job to interrogate the man who was supposedly supplying the weapons from inside the Taiwanese government.

Mina impatiently tapped her foot. She was waiting on the train platform, watching the last of crowd from the government buildings wait drowsily for the last train to come in.

Serena's voice chirped over the radio. "He's supposed to catch the last train out of here."

"When is that?" Mina asked.

Amy tapped her HUD that displayed the time. "In nine minutes."

"Well, maybe he's late," Mina suggested, starting to pace up and down the platform.

Serena disagreed with her. "Don't be ridiculous, if you work this late, you're not going to be late for the last train out. Now stop talking and get ready for him to show up." Serena really didn't want to be here, and waiting for targets to show up was probably her weakest skill, because it required patience. Patience that she didn't seem to have as of late.

* * *

"So, what do you think of this entire situation so far?" Lita muttered to Amy. They were sitting in a storage closet underneath one of the stairwells to the main platform. It was uncomfortable, but it was a good way not to get spotted by curious onlookers.

"Huh?" She was still distractedly tapping on her tablet computer.

"I mean, going around, blowing stuff up, killing people…it's a bit...um."

"Too much?"

"Yeah."

"Like it or not, we're in this situation right now, and we've got to make the best of what we have."

Amy touched something on her HUD, and Lita heard a slight buzzing sound from her own HUD.

"What the…"

"I've jammed the signal for a second. I don't know what's going on, but I'm trying to find out more. There's something these guys aren't telling us."

"No shit," Lita said to her. "But how are you going to do that?"

"I don't know. But I'm going to find out." She nodded to Lita, and then tapped the HUD again.

"SAILOR Mercury," Luna's voice resounded over the radio. "We lost you there for a second. Is there a technical problem?"

"I don't know," Amy lied. "I'll have it looked at when we get back to base."

"Roger that. Continue your observation until the target makes approach."

Lita gave Amy a look; "That was a close one," it said.

* * *

Raye was trying not to fall asleep on a bench near the entrance to the station when she saw their target. He was husky man in his late thirties, about 170 centimeters tall and greying hair. He looked especially hurried, as he was about to miss his train home.

Raye tapped her HUD, disguised as a pair of reading glasses. "Heads up everyone, target is approaching the train station."

That woke everyone up.

"Roger that Mars," Serena said back. She was near the stairwell that led down to the platform proper. She saw their target walking through the faregates, swiping his EasyCard to open up one of them, and continued to walk at a brisk pace past Serena and down toward the platform.

"I'm right behind him," she whispered into the radio. "Get ready, Mina."

"On it." Mina saw their target come down the stairwell, with Serena in tow. With a loud screech, the last train of the night pulled in, and the few people on the platform now boarded. Their target suddenly started to run, trying to make it before the doors closed.

He didn't get very far, because Mina stuck out her leg and tripped the poor man.

"Gah!" both of them screamed out. The man stumbled and tried to get onto the train, but it was too late. The doors closed, and the train left.

"Dammit!" he swore. Their target turned his attention onto Mina. "You've made me miss my train, you bitch!" He was just angry though, and wasn't going to hurt her.

"Look, I'm sorry, I was trying to make it too!" Mina said in English.

"Oh…you're not from here," was the slightly less angry response. "A young woman like yourself probably shouldn't be walking around in the city at night, by yourself."

Serena was hiding behind a bench in the middle of the platform, hoping that their target hadn't seen her, and that Mina's suaveness would be able to keep him distracted.

"Um…well…I'm really sorry that I made you miss your train. I'm just trying to get back to the hotel, and I've only been here for a day or so…"

"Which hotel are you staying at?"

"Well, we're staying at the Grand Hyatt," she slowly said, trying to go through the script she had made up for the mission.

The man looked at her suspiciously. "Who is we?"

Mina smiled at him, trying to deflect his skepticism. "Some friends and myself."

"Uh-huh." He looked around, then leaned in close to her. "Look, drop the act. I can see your other friend hiding behind the bench over there, and I passed by another one in the entrance."

Crap, Serena thought. Although she couldn't really understand what the man was saying, she could definitely understand that things were going south pretty quick.

"SAILOR Moon, our cover has been blown," Mina said, touching her HUD. Their target's name flashed up; Omen Deng was his name. It kinda had a nice ring to it.

"Nice glasses," Deng commented. "Can I get one of those?"

"If Google decides to get their act together," Mina said back. She motioned to Serena to come over to her position and to make sure Deng didn't decide to run off. "Now, what group are you working with?"

"Depends. I work for a number of different groups here in Taipei. I'm even on the board of directors for the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra."

Mina rolled her eyes. "The group that is going to attack a bunch of Japanese companies and Taiwanese government buildings next week."

"Oh, you mean that one?"

"Yes," Mina slowly said, irritated that he was yanking on her chain. "That one."

"I'm not involved in any sort of terrorist activities."

"You sure about that? The intelligence we have on you indicates that you're connected with a splinter faction of the…" Mina quickly looked up the organization he was supposed to be involved with. "…the People First Party?"

"Those conservative nutjobs?" Deng scoffed. "You must be joking."

"Well, maybe you can enlighten us then."

He raised his hands in (mock?) defeat. "Look, Miss. All I can tell you is that I work for an organization that wants to see some change in Taiwan. If that means getting the Japanese to leave and making the government uneasy in process, that's what we'll do."

Serena, who was now standing near the man, glared at him with crossed arms. She did not like Deng one bit, and he was just stalling for time now.

She tapped her HUD. "Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, get out here."

"I'm on the way." Raye swiped a one-day token on the faregates and ran inside.

"Looks like she wants to get the information out of that guy," Amy said as she opened the door to the storage closet, slowly blinking away the bright lights in the station.

"Doesn't look like he's willing to tell us anything," Lita added, stuffing a laptop computer Amy had been using into a backpack and heaving it onto her shoulders.

Deng smiled as the rest of the SAILOR team came out of the woodwork. "Well, looks like you brought friends."

Raye ran down the stairs to the terminal and up to where Serena and Mina were standing. Serena motioned her over and took her aside for a second.

"Raye, watch him. I'm going to talk to Mina for a second. Okay?"

"Got it." Serena motioned to Amy and Lita to go set up on the benches she was standing by and to make themselves useful.

"Mina, come here." Mina narrowed her eyes at Deng, but left him to go over where Serena was standing, by the benches.

"What's up?"

"I don't exactly know what this guy is doing, but he's just stalling. I have no idea for what, but wrap it up ASAP. If we get the location of…um…"

"Maybe where he's hiding the weapons? A drop point, maybe?"

"Yeah, that'll help out a lot. Just where they're being held or the drop point. No suppliers, nothing else, that'll be for another time. We need to get this resolved ASAP. I'm going to give Luna a SITREP, so ask Raye if you need any help."

Mina nodded. "I'm on it, Serena." She walked back to Deng, while Serena tapped on her HUD to talk to Luna, who had been suspiciously quiet for most of the mission.

"What was that all about?" Deng asked plesently.

"None of your business," was the terse reply from Mina. "Let's cut to the chase. Where are the weapons being held?"

Deng shrugged. "Well, that would depend on what weapons you were talking about."

"Uh, the ones that were going to be used on an attack on Japanese companies next week. And Taipei 101." Mina still couldn't believe that huge building was just right near the train station they were in at the moment. What was more unbelievable is the amount of stonewalling Deng was doing and evading her questions.

"Ma'am, I think that before we continue any further, a sufficient transaction, preferably in terms of Taiwanese dollars or American ones, though Euros and Pound Sterling would also be acceptable as well."

Well, this is going just peachy, Mina thought to herself.

"Mina, this is getting us nowhere," Raye hissed.

"Knock it off, Mars," Mina snapped back. "Don't use our names!"

"He's stalling you and you're buying every yen of it! Let me at him and I'll make him talk!"

* * *

Deng rolled his eyes at the two arguing girls. They were pretty new at this line of work, and they weren't going to get anything out of him, no sir. He pulled out a cigarette from his suit pocket and…

* * *

"Hey…hey!" Deng suddenly felt himself being picked up and thrown across the floor. He landed with a loud thud against the tiles.

"Goddammit, tell us where the fucking weapons are!" Raye screamed at him, in Japanese. It wouldn't do much good.

"What are you doing?!" Serena yelled from across the station. "Luna, I'll get back to you." She dropped the call and started to sprint to Mina and Raye's position.

"I got this, Serena!" Raye yelled back.

* * *

Raye picked him up and dragged him over to the train tracks. Well, she would have to get through the platform screen doors that were in place specifically to prevent people from going over the sides, but she would probably just ram his poor head through the glass until it broke, or he was dead. Whichever came first.

"For fucks sake, I'm on YOUR side!" he screamed at Raye. In Japanese.

That stopped her dead in her tracks.

"What."

"I'm with the Defense Intelligence Headquarters!"

Serena came up to Deng and looked at him. Their supposed target was now yelling at them in Japanese that he was actually working for the Japanese government as well. "Wait, from the Intelligence we got, you're supposed to be working with the splinter group on getting weapons from inside the military…"

"Yeah, that's my dammed cover, you idiot!"

That stopped the SAILOR team right then and there. It was turning into another blue on blue situation, and it needed to stop, right this instant.

"Let go of him."

Raye protested. "But Serena…"

"Let. Him. Go." Serena hissed the words at Raye, which caused her to immediately drop the man onto the floor, in a heap.

"Dammit." He coughed an gasped for air, and after being choked and beaten up by one of the more aggressive members of the team, he wasn't doing so good.

"Mercury, get Luna and find out if this guy is the real deal."

"On it." Amy started to transmit what little data they had on "Omen Deng" to Luna, who would cross-reference it with data they had on file with the DIH.

"So let me get this straight," Serena interrogated. "You're working with the splinter group to provide them weapons to attack Japanese companies here, and you're doing nothing about it?!"  
"We aren't going to give the actual weapons, you idiot," Deng hissed back. "We're not that stupid. Unlike the Americans."

Serena didn't get the reference. She shrugged it off and continued to ask him questions.

"What's he talking about?" Lita whispered to Amy.

"Operation Fast and Furious. Long story."  
"What do the DIH guys have on them?" Serena was not in a good mood, and their entire time here might have been for naught if this was a Japanese operation that they didn't know about.

"I have no idea. All I know is that they're planning to meet me in this culture park near the Guang Hua Digital Plaza to finalize the deal at 0600hrs today. Alright? That's all I know."

"Where exactly?"

"They rented out building '5A', on the southwest side of the Shimin and Xinsheng road intersection."

Serena stared the man down, wondering what the hell was taking Luna so long to get back to them.

Luna's voice chirped in over Serena's HUD. "SAILOR Moon, I've got the report."

"Go ahead."

"He is an agent working for the DIH. Codename is "Steven." Official cover is Omen Deng, but his real identity is Itsuki Ishihara, and he's been working for the HUMINT division of the DIH for about five years now."

Serena rolled her eyes and groaned. "Why weren't we notified about this earlier?"  
"Unknown. I'm trying to get into contact with Colonel Iwasaki, but he's out of town on a retreat in Hokkaido at the moment."

"I don't even want to know," Amy muttered. "Luna, can you find the location of the meeting?"

There was a brief moment of silence before Luna replied.

"Done. I'm sending it to your HUDs now."

With that misunderstanding cleared up, Serena helped Deng get up.

"Were you planning to make a move on them?" she asked, giving him a hand.

He took it, and helped himself up. "Well, yes."

At least he's honest, Serena thought.

"Don't go anywhere. And DON'T tell anyone at Defense Intelligence Headquarters about us. Otherwise, we'll have to come down and kill you. And we don't want to do that."

"Fine, fine." Deng had been in this business for a long enough time to know when to keep his trap shut.

"Everyone, let's get a move on," Serena said to the other four members there. They left the station, leaving Deng there with no way to get home and severely beaten up. It sure was a shitty way to end the day.

* * *

Several hours later, the SAILOR team had reequipped and positioned themselves by the location indicated by Deng.

"This is SAILOR Moon, I'm in position."

She was taking up an overwatch position near the warehouse, crouching down near some boxes in order to get a clear view of the entrance. Two Humvees were outside, which made Serena suspicious already. "Doesn't appear to be anyone inside." The windows were very small, so she switched over to an infrared view from her HUD.

"There appears to be several individuals in the building," Serena reported. "Three targets are by the front door, three by the back, and two appear to be walking around inside."

"That sounds about right for a group this size," Amy commented. More information had come in about the splinter group in the hours that had followed; apparently, they had been active only for about a month, and were considered very dangerous. They had some weapons already, and if the deal had gone down, they would have had even more guns. That was excluding the fact that several intelligence agencies were tracking these guys (and managing to step on each other's toes in the process) and weren't about to let them commit acts of terror.

"This is SAILOR Jupiter," Lita interrupted. "Mars and I are approaching the rear entrance to the warehouse and are taking up breaching positions. No movement inside the building, over."

"Wait…" Raye said, halting Lita. "Someone just came out of the back."

A man stepped out of the back door with a T65 assault rifle in hand.

"He appears to have a uniform of some sort on. Armed with an assault rifle. Looks like ROC military."

"Could be that he's just playing the part," Raye suggested. Whatever was going in there, it was certainly important.

"Luna, I need you to do a vehicle check on these Humvees out here," Serena asked. "We might be dealing some ex-military or people working within the military supplying this group, over." It wouldn't be a far stretch; conscription was still in effect in Taiwan, and the temptation to sell weapons to criminals wasn't a tall order for the poor conscript that didn't want to be there.

"There's a nice art gallery, if you and Mina want to check it out," Serena joked halfheartedly to Amy, looking at the things that popped up on her HUD.

"Very funny, Serena," Amy equally unenthused replied back. "We're set at the south end of the facility, on lookout if you need us."

Serena checked the time; it was 0555hrs. "Alright, mission is a go in five minutes. Stick to the plan; I'll go up to the door, say that I'm a representative on behalf of Deng, Lita and Raye will breach from the back. Take em out, get intel, and blow up their stuff. Sound good?"

"Sounds just great," Raye said. "It'll make up for not letting me beat the shit out of that Deng guy."

"Raye, give it a rest, okay?" Lita whispered to her.

Five minutes passed. No movement inside, with the people still wandering about or doing household duties, it seemed.

"Okay, Lita, Raye, you are clear for entry. Go!"

Lita and Raye quickly ran up to the door and surprised the guard, with Lita clobbering him on the head and Raye muffling his yells of pain.

* * *

At Mina and Amy's position by the front of the culture park, a group of five vehicles, two Humvees and three Nisson X-Trails rolled down the road and entered into the park. Amy and Mina ducked in their own vehicle to avoid being seen.

"Uh…guys?" Mina whispered. "There's a couple of military vehicles approaching your position!"

Luna could also see the convoy, after tapping into the CCTV system in the area.

"All SAILOR Units, hold position, military convoy is approaching from Zhongxiao road from the east. Stay out of sight and observe movement."

Lita and Raye dragged the poor soldier away from the back door and toward the cluster of bushes they had been hiding in.

"Serena, I'm searching this guy's pockets for intel, over."

"Got it. Continue to hold position."

While Lita flexcuffed and gagged the "soldier", Raye went through his pockets to see if he was the real deal. She came up with an ID and some personal effects; a picture of a smiling family, and a picture of a girlfriend. Nice hair, Raye absentmindedly thought as she put the picture of the girlfriend down and picked the ID up.

"Luna, do a personnel check for me, ROC military."

There was a slight pause on the other end. "Send traffic."

"A PFC Chiang Han." Raye snapped a photo of the ID and sent it back to Luna, who quickly translated it and ran it through the ROC database on personnel.

"He's legitimate," Luna reported. "PFC Chiang Han, conscripted in June of 2012 and is slated to be released from military service next year."

That was not good news. Raye tapped her HUD and started whispering to Serena.

"Shit, are you getting this Serena?"

"It gets even better," she added dryly. Serena was observing the convoy pull up, and several high ranking officers exited their chauffeured SUVs. A young lieutenant opened the front door up and saluted crisply, then approached the collected officers. Luna and Artemis's report on the two Humvees outside had also come up with legitimate ROC military property tags.

* * *

"Good work, Lieutenant," the general said to the young officer who had just come out of the building. They were talking in Mandarin, and Luna was giving a real time translation of the entire conversation. "Glad to see this entire operation went down smoothly."

"Yes sir," the LT replied. He didn't look older than twenty-three, Serena guessed. "The group has been completely suppressed and we've been taking inventory of their entire operation since last night. It took us a little while, but it could have been very serious if this operation were to have been allowed to succeed. Even more so if they got more weapons from inside our military, sir."

The general was impressed by the spirit and skill of the LT's operation here. Time to throw the dog a bone…

"Well, I'd like to enlighten you on some details. Now that this operation is concluded, it's safe for me to say this. The so-called arms dealers was actually working for the Japanese government, and with their cooperation, we were able to raid this compound earlier this morning, with your team contributing the most, of course."

"Really?" the LT asked. "Well, I'm glad that we can have some help from others in the region. When where you tipped off about this terrorist group?"

The general check his watch. "About 0100hrs this morning. It was a very close call indeed, and if your team hadn't been on standby…"

"Well, that's what we're here for," the LT replied, beaming with pride.

"Me too, Lieutenant. Say, you're up for promotion soon, aren't you?"

The LT tried not to stutter too much. "Um…yes?"

"Well, I'll put in a good word for you. Carry on then."

"Yes sir!" The LT saluted the general, and the top brass got back into their cars and drove off, leaving the LT to continue on with his work, and for the SAILOR team to stand dumbfounded in the sheer idiocy of their now rendered moot mission.

"Shit," was the collective response of the SAILOR team.

"Well, that was a complete waste of time," Lita said, looking at the poor soldier they had just subdued. They would have to make a quick getaway if they didn't want to be caught with this guy out here.

"I can't wait to fill out paperwork out back home about this," Mina grumbled. "Are we extracting?"

"That's affirmative," Serena said, slowly walking away from the building she was hiding near and toward their cars they had driven there. "Time to head back to the safehouse and prepare to leave the country."

"I'm working on arrangements for a flight out today," Luna added. She was just as irritated as the team in the field was; with no communication with other departments in the Japanese government, they had committed time and resources to a moot operation. She also berated herself for not checking military radio traffic as well, although she later found out the time to break the encryption on the network would have taken her a long time, even past the hour set by Deng for the meet and including Amy's help as well. There was nothing to be done about it now.

With those foreboding thought on her mind, Luna yelled at Artemis to try to get into contact with Colonel Iwasaki again, and then set about trying to schedule a flight home for these five girls.


	94. Omake: The doctor is in, Part II

**Omake Chapter: The doctor is in, Part II**

**1020hrs, 20 July 2012, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

**_"_**_Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.**" **Ivan Illich_

_"Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgment. A healthy person is never unhappy." George Ohsawa._

* * *

Dr. Kobayashi looked around the decrepit facility that he was standing in. The tall, white building in the middle of nowhereland, Japan, hidden by mountains and forests was quickly being overcome with weeds and organic growth; vines scaled the walls, rusting equipment sat in rooms slowly falling apart, almost all the windows were broken…this was the facility he was supposed to meet someone at? Five stories of ruined dreams and broken visions were all that remained of this facility, and it wasn't impressing Dr. Kobayashi in the least bit.

A car rolling up the long, winding road brought him quickly back to reality. It was a fancy Toyota Century, so whoever was coming here to meet him, must be really important. Kobayashi straightened his suit coat and walked over the limo, which had just pulled next to his more modest Mazda Versia.

The person who got out of the car was certainly not what he was expecting. A woman, in her mid-thirties and dressed impeccably in a skirt suit.

"Hello," she said to him, politely. She bowed very deeply, showing off some cleavage that was most certainly deliberate on her part. "My name is Beryl."

That's certainly an odd name, Kobayashi thought as he bowed back. They exchanged business cards before getting onto the business of the day.

"Thank you, Dr. Kobayashi for coming out here on such short notice," Beryl said to him. "Mr. Tanaka would have come out himself, but he's such a busy man, so please accept me in his stead."

Dr. Kobayashi simply nodded his head acknowledgement, then continued to stare at the abandoned facility.

"What's this all about anyway?" he asked suspiciously.

"We've got a new program coming up in the next year or so, and this will the headquarters for it."

Any time a high powered executive (or in this case, "Executive Assistant") started to use the words "New Program" (or other buzzwords…"Restructuring" "Reorganization" "Elimination of Waste" "Right-sizing"), it was time to be very scared.

"What exactly is the program about…?" Kobayashi asked again, not exactly pleased that Beryl was evading his questions.

Beryl smiled at him, creepily. Dr. Kobayashi didn't know what to think about her; she was so enigmatic and unreadable that trying to get the normal non-verbal clues out of her was basically impossible.

"Well, if you join up, then we can tell you everything about it."

And that's the big catch, Kobayashi thought to himself.

"What's the catch for joining up with you guys, hm?" Like hell I'm going to be working for some big mega corp, he thought cynically.

It was like Beryl could read his mind. "Oh, no. No no nooo," she chuckled back. "You're not working for our company. This is an official government project. We just own the building, but we'll be transferring it over to government custody soon."

That just made Kobayashi more suspicious. "Why isn't someone from the government out here then?"

"They're a bit busy with other things right now. Still trying to pick up the pieces from the tsunami and all that. Something about a vote of no confidence too, so that's been taking up the PM's office for such a long time." She forgot to mention the part that the PM didn't even know about the program yet. The pieces were all starting to fall into place.

He sighed. A creepy, unmarked facility in the middle of nowhere, plus a government project that was going to start soon? This was taking him back to Italy.

Again, Beryl read his mind. She brought up his personnel file on her iPad, pulling it out of her purse with great gusto, and read out loud to him.

"Hmm. This program in Italy that you were involved in? Tell me how that went?"

Kobayashi's heart stopped for a second. "No one is supposed to know about that," he growled. He didn't like to be blackmailed, and this was where it was going.

"Oh, we don't know much, since you left fairly early on before they got serious and started making cyborg warriors and all that good stuff."

She tapped on the iPad again.

"You need the work. Your talent is being wasted on hospitals that don't understand your genius. They only care about treating the symptoms," Beryl said, trying to tug at his emotions, "With this new program, you could help so many people."

Helping people. That was what Dr. Kobayashi was all about. It was so difficult trying to explain the nuances in brain surgery and in general, how the brain worked in general. If only I could make people understand…

But first, he had to get a little bit more information about what they knew about him.

"So, what else do you have on me?"

"Let's see. Born on 11 November 1960 in Osaka, completed undergraduate degree in Biology at Waseda University in 1980…hmm, it looks like you were roommates with our General Ishimura."

"Did he recommend me?" Kobayashi asked.

"He did put a good word in for you, but other than that, he was not involved in the interview process."

"Good." He really didn't want anyone pulling favors for him, then calling it in later. But a good word here and there wasn't bad either.

"Graduated top of your class. Accepted and graduated from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1984. Completed internship and residency at Johns Hopkins University in Neurological Surgery. Applied and worked in the Neurosurgery department of St. Luke's International Hospital in Chuo, Tokyo until 1994. Worked at various hospitals until 2007, when granted a work visa in Italy, where you worked for the government doing Neurological research until 2009. Worked at the research department at Tokyo Medical University, but quit for personal reasons in May of this year. Divorced of January of this year, after a marriage of ten years. No children. No living relatives."

She looked up from the tablet computer, and smiled at him. "So you see, Dr. Kobayashi, we know your past, and certainly know what you're capable of. All that's left is to sign the paperwork, if so desire."

Dr. Kobayashi just stood there, looking at the woman who had just raddled off his entire professional and personal history.

She had a point. Perhaps he could make a difference, and the work he could do for the government would be better than just working for some hospital or research at some no-name medical school.

"Fine." He tapped his foot impatiently, but he was certainly leaning toward joining up with this program…whatever it was. "A couple more questions."

"This program will be addressing the needs of Japanese self-defense, and the modification of volunteers to be able to defend Japanese interests here and abroad. That's all I'm allowed to tell you unless you sign the papers."

Just like in Italy, he groused. "But they are volunteers, correct?"

Beryl was evasive, as usual. "In a manner of speaking, yes."

Kobayashi didn't like that one bit, but they had too much on him, and he needed the work. Beryl pounded the final nail in the coffin, however.

"Compensation will be set at 20,000,000 yen per year. Again, this is a government job, not a Nakanishi one."

That certainly set it for him. The divorce had bankrupted him, and morality aside, there was no way a person like him could take up work at a host bar or something other than medicine.

"Where do I sign?"

"Right here." Beryl turned her iPad around and revealed a page that basically said that legal action could be taken against him if he revealed and blah blah blah, been there, signed it before. She gave him a stylus to sign, and after a moment of hesitation, Dr. Kobayashi signed the electronic document.

* * *

"So…now that I'm in…what was this place beforehand?"

Beryl tapped furiously away at the unseen icons, saving his signature and making sure that it went through. After she finished, she looked up at the building for a second before speaking.

"This building used to belong to a very special division of the Nakanishi Group. The Nakanishi Biological Research Laboratories."

That caught Kobayashi off guard for a second. "Wait, I thought you guys were just into tech and banking."

"Well, we need to expand our horizons," she said. "Or tried to. It didn't exactly work out for us, as you can see here." She cleared her throat before continuing on. "Anyway, about five years ago, there was a terrible accident here. An explosion."

"An explosion?" Kobayashi looked at the building again. There didn't seem to be any damage to the building, so it must have been small.

"It was mostly confined to the basement, but we lost many good researchers. I'm afraid that's all we know, besides the one who caused it, and he's long gone."

"Could…could it happen again?" he asked.

"No, from what little we know, the head researcher was trying to come up with some way to help improve his daughter's health, and for children in general. But something went wrong, and most of the data was lost. Hence, what you see here." She gestured toward the building.

"I hope you plan on cleaning the place up," Kobayashi commented, taking a closer look at the facility. The front of the building had a place for cars to drive in, under a concrete roof, to disgorge their passengers. The entrance was a pair of broken double glass doors, and from what he could see from his position in the parking lot, there was a reception desk and several hallways leading off from the lobby.

"We're just having our contractors come in a spruce the place up. They'll be done within a month."

"Hmm." Kobayashi walked around a little bit more, examining the building before continuing on.

"What exactly is this project that the government wants me for?"

"Very good." More tapping on the iPad. "The program will be called "SAILOR-SF, short for the Systematic Awareness Intelligence Operational Recon Service Force. A couple of operatives will be tasked with defending Japanese interests abroad and…"

"What does that have to do with me?" Kobayashi interrupted. He didn't like where this was going.

"Ahem." Beryl didn't like to be interrupted, but answered his question nonetheless. "You will be tasked with improving performance via neurosurgery, and overall, you will be in charge of the project."

"The entire one? Even the 'operational' side of things?" Kobayashi was really regretting signing that document now.

"No, that will be left up to someone from the JSDF. But this will be your project. Your responsibility. You can make a difference, finally."

Yeah, in terms of body count, Kobayashi ironically thought. This was heading into legal grey area that was such a part of government work, but there was no other choice other than to plow forward and hope for the best.

"Do you have any more questions for me?" Beryl asked.

Kobayashi had plenty of questions indeed, but he knew that he would get no straight answers from this Beryl person. Perhaps a phone call to General Ishimura of the JASDF would help clarify some issues. And since he was now working for the government, it would help that he could get some political support on his side, just in case he needed it.

"No, I do not."

That certainly seemed pleasing to Beryl.

"This has certainly been a productive day," Beryl beamed at Dr. Kobayashi. "How do you feel about working in a month or so?" That coincidentally happened to be the time the contractors would be done cleaning the place up.

"Sounds good to me."

"And to sweeten the deal…" She went over to the car and pulled out a briefcase. "Here's a 300,000 yen advance, along with details of a bank account in Switzerland."

These guys must have really wanted me in, Kobayashi grimly thought to himself, taking the briefcase and bowing deeply.

"Thank you for your generosity. I will do my best to uphold your trust in me."

Beryl nodded. "We know you will." She checked the time on her iPad.

"Oh dear me. I have an appointment at 1300 in Tokyo, and I must be to the airport soon. Someone from the government will be in touch about your living arrangements here."

"Thank you." Kobayashi bowed again.

"It was my pleasure." Beryl bowed, and then hurried over to the Toyota Century, yelling at the driver to get a move on. The limo spun its tires as it accelerated out of the facility, leaving Dr. Kobayashi to wonder what the hell he had gotten himself into.


	95. Omake: A day in the life of Lita

**Omake Chapter: A day in the life of Lita.**

**0620hrs, 9 October 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan**

_"Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. "Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness." John Wesley_

_"The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind." Gilbert K. Chesterton._

* * *

Beep beep beep beep beep.

Lita had to suppress the urge to slap her hand down on the alarm clock, otherwise she might break it. Again. For the fifth time this month. And that was without her prosthetic arm.

She finally managed to hit the snooze button with her remaining arm and roll out of bed…and onto the floor.

"Ow!"

What a great start to the day. After picking herself off of the floor, Lita dusted her nightgown off and stood up, grunting as she did so.

"Ugh…" She rubbed the stump of her left arm with her right hand, massaging the phantom pain that came every now and then. It was just another reminder of the extremely crappy situation she found herself in every day. If it wasn't killing people who may or may not be innocent, it was being poked and prodded with a variety of needles and immersion in healing fluid, which was supposed to be part of their ongoing treatment.

As per the instructions of Dr. Kobayashi, she took out two bottles of pills from her desk, and took one from each. The staff had been nice enough to put a mini-fridge while they were away on missions, and now it was full of soda, bottled water, and some sake and vodka. Not that Lita liked to drink anyway, but she appreciated the gesture. She took out a bottle of water and opened it up, popping the pills into her mouth and washing it down with the water.

Lita put the bottle of water away and closed the refrigerator door, and walked over to a set of dresser drawers by the desk. Opening the top one, she took off her nightgown and changed out her underwear, and then slipping into some workout clothes. She had gotten used to putting on clothing with just one good arm, and while it took some effort, she had picked it up quite quickly.

"What time is it…?" Lita squinted at her alarm clock, which also doubled as a radio. It read, "0630."

It was about time to begin.

* * *

"Good morning, everyone," the announcer over the radio said. "Let's begin."

"One…two…three! One…two…three!"

The soothing piano music and the announcer's voice carried Lita into a magical place, away from the suffering and misery that seemed to follow her no matter what she did. It didn't matter how many people she killed in the name of national security or in the defense of freedom, at the end of the day, she was just a hired gun, perhaps, doing the dirty work that no one else wanted to do.

Lita bent her knees down and swung her one good arm (plus her left stump) together, following the announcer's instruction on the radio.

"Now do windmills, please."

She switched out, bringing her arm over her head and swinging it down, then doing the process in reverse. It worked a lot better if she had two arms, but she didn't want to put that prosthetic arm on just yet.

The rest of the radio exercises went without a hitch. Lots of stretching and movement of the upper body, bending back, then forward, bringing the left arm over and stretching to the right and vice versa…basically, your standard exercises.

"That will conclude our exercises for today. And now for the news."

There was a slight pause as the newsdesk got ready, then their host started talking.

"Good Morning. Prime Minister Kenji Hasegawa today announced that there will be a major increase in JSDF funding, from .9 percent of the GDP to 1.0 percent. This move has been met with skepticism on both sides; Hasegawa's Party, the DJP is unhappy that the increase is occurring in the first place due to promises in the previous election stating that the budget…"

"And that's enough of that," Lita groused. She switched off the radio.

That was a good enough warmup. Lita grabbed her iPod from the desk, switched off the lights to her room and opened the door out into the hallway; she momentarily thought about putting the prosthetic arm on, but that would be for later in the day. No need to wear it when she didn't need to. It felt like a good time for a run, so better get on it before the doctors started to prod her again with their infernal equipment.

* * *

Lita strolled down the hallway to the exercise room (they weren't allowed outside the facility, so treadmills and such were brought in and set up in a room on the third floor (there were five in total), facing towards the mountains behind the facility. It was a glorious view, with the sun coming up from the East and illuminating the trees and fauna on the mountains…it would be even more glorious if it wasn't from a facility that conducted secret military operations.

"Morning Lita," an alert Amy said to her, shaking Lita out of her thoughts. "How are you doing today?" Amy and Lita seemed to be the early risers in the group, with Serena and Raye being the most heavy out of all of them. It varied either way with Mina, but today she was sleeping in.

"I'm doing okay," Lita replied. "Been having some trouble sleeping as of late. I think everything is just catching up to me."

Amy smiled at her, trying to make her feel better. "It's been hard on me too. I don't know how I'm keeping it together, but I'm doing it…somehow."

"I wish I could be as strong as you then," Lita said, looking at the ground.

"You're plenty strong," Amy reassured. Lita looked back up at her, and saw the nice smile on her face. That certainly cheered her up.

They looked at each for a second, but there was stuff to be done on Amy's part; something about reprogramming the HUDs and making sure that the beta testing (aka, the use by the SAILOR team) was satisfactory.

"I'll see you at breakfast, okay?" Amy said, walking down the hall and toward the basement. "Have a good workout."

"Yeah, I'll see you there too," Lita softly said. She waited until Amy was out of sight, then sighed heavily.

"Damn."

With Amy out of the way, she continued down the hallway and up the stairs to the workout room.

* * *

The five kilometer run wasn't much of a challenge to Lita, but it gave her time to think, something that she hadn't had much time to do in the last month or so. Why were they here? What were they doing this for? Would it ever end? Were the doctors and medical personnel genuinely caring, or was it all a façade?

She rubbed her head. Lita had headaches from time to time now, and Dr. Iwasaki and Kobayashi both assured her that it had nothing to do with the microchips in her brain, but she didn't think that was true at all…was it?

The treadmill beeped as she passed the five kilometer mark, and the machine started to slow down. Lita slowed her pace to match, still lost in thoughts.

She missed school. At the time, she would had done anything to get out of it, to free herself from the confines of government sponsored education and head out into the real world, where anything was possible. And here she was, in the confines of government sponsored military operations, and with even less freedom now.

Lita could see that the sun was coming up, and while it was not facing her directly, it was coming up over the facility in the east, its beautiful rays shining over the fall atmosphere in Japan.

What time was it anyway? Lita checked the time on her iPod; it was one of those fancy Nano ones with a touch screen and everything. 0800hrs.

Well, time to get breakfast. She hopped off of the treadmill and made her way downstairs.

* * *

The dining hall was in the center of the medical facility, with a big room filled with bland looking tables and chairs, designed more to make the bottoms of the occupants uncomfortable than for comfort, but that's what you got for having the government run things. A nice tea garden nearby helped to alleviate whatever tensions people might be having at the moment, and for the most part, the kitchen did its best to serve tasty food throughout the day.

"Morning Lita," one of the line cooks yelled out as she entered the cafeteria. "How are you doing today?"

Lita immediately regretted not knowing his name; for all their time here, she had not gotten to know the security staff, the orderlies, most of the nurses, doctors and other personnel working at the medical facility. It took a great deal of people to run the place, and there was always some activity going on, even if it didn't apply to the SAILOR team.

"I'm doing good, thanks," she said back, awkwardly. There was a buffet set up at the far end of the cafeteria, closest to the kitchen for obvious reasons, and Lita walked over there to get some food.

"What do you have today?" she asked the line cook, examining the platters of delicious smelling food.

"Well, we've got the standard Japanese fare over here," he said, pointing to a bunch of miso soup, white rice, grilled salmon, umeboshi and tamagoyaki. "And then we have the Western style breakfast over here." Some sausage, fried potatoes, hotcakes, biscuits and gravy. Nothing too special, but it was still a tasty Western…well, American style breakfast.

"Glad to see someone remembers my recipe," she commented, looking at the baked golden and fluffy biscuits. "I'll go with the Western style breakfast today." The cook smiled; it really didn't matter which meal she took, so long as the customer was happy. Lita took a plate from a rack next to some trays, and handed it to the cook who dumped large portions of the potatoes, sausage and biscuits.

"I'm not quite sure why would someone would eat biscuits and gravy," the line cook said, pouring the gravy over her biscuits. "But it's surprisingly good."

"It's an American thing," Lita said, taking the plate from the cook. It was obviously more heavy than before, and balancing it with one hand was a challenge. But she could handle it.

"They eat hamburgers all the time and are quite heavy."

"You're going to be quite heavy if you keep eating like this!" he joked. Joking about a woman's weight was something a man did at his own peril, but Lita took the joke in stride.

"I need the fat for what I do," Lita shot back. "Anyway, thanks."

"You're welcome. Come back for seconds!"

Lita walked away from the buffet area and picked out a seat in the center of the room. Sitting down, she suddenly remembered that she forgot her fork, and that it would probably be best if she got it. She was about to get up when she heard a voice behind her.

"Hey Lita."

It was Amy again.

"Hi Amy. Finished your programming…whatever?"

"Yes. We're still in beta, but everything seems to be okay for now. The translator is still a piece of junk, and the hostile targeting/acquisition system seems to be a little bit wonky at times. There might be a security problem with that, but I'll try to get that fixed in the next couple of days."

"Well, I'm sure that you'll find the answer."

"Yeah, me too." Amy's stomach growled, much to her embarrassment. "What's for breakfast?" she asked, placing her hand over her stomach.

"They've got both traditional Japanese and Western style breakfast there," Lita said, pointing to the buffet line.

"I'm not in the mood for sausages and biscuits," Amy said, looking at Lita's plate. "I think I'll stick to the Japanese food."

"Whatever. Can you get me a fork while you're at it?"

Amy nodded at that. She went over to the buffet and handed the line cook her plate, grabbing some chopsticks and a fork in the process. From it looked like the cook was talking to Amy; Lita couldn't really hear what they were saying, but it seemed to mirror the conversation they had earlier. Amy politely bowed to the cook and took her tray with food back to Lita's table.

"Say…do you know what the cook's name is?" Lita asked as she sat down. "I can never remember."

"Hold on…" Amy took out a HUD disguised as reading glasses and put them on. She turned and faced the line cook, who was now dishing out some food to some nurses.

"From the looks of it, his name is Kazuhiro Saitou. Born in 1985. Dropped out of Hokuriku University due to family and monetary problems. Worked for several different food service jobs before attending vocational school and…"

"Amy, that's enough." Lita felt really uncomfortable at how that much information could be available to them in an instant. Sure, using it on a mission? That was one thing, but using it to not only find someone's name, but their entire personal history was extremely disconcerting.

"Hmph." Amy took off the glasses and set them on the table.

"Itadakimasu!" she chanted and clapped her hands together.

Lita did her best to imitate her, but it was kinda hard to clap your hands together when you only had one arm.

"Oh. Um…" Amy blushed at the faux pas.

"It's okay," Lita quickly said, moving to clear up the miscommunication.

Amy tried to find some words to correct the situation. "I'm sorry, it's just…"

"Eat your meal," Lita ordered, playfully. "It's alright."

"Thanks. I'll be more careful."

The two of them dug in, eating heartily and not saying much. One could easily mistake the scene in a nice private school somewhere in Japan, or England, or even the US, with two friends just having breakfast as the day began. Amy slowly picked up some grilled salmon and put it in her mouth, savoring each fleshy bite, while Lita simply blitzed through her biscuits and gravy thinking that if she ate them everyday, she would get so fat.

* * *

"What do you have planned for the rest of the day?" Lita asked, finishing up the last of her meal.

Amy shrugged. "I'm done with the HUDs, so I think I might catch up on some reading or perhaps get around to that Winston Churchill biopic that I wanted to watch."

"Heh. That sounds real interesting."

Amy smirked at Lita's unenthused response.

"Just because I'm better educated and smarter than the rest of you, doesn't mean you can make fun of me and my choices in movies."

"Oh yes I can," Lita retorted. "Like _Transformers?"_

"I enjoy it ironically," Amy said with a straight face.

"Uh-huh. You're also not a hipster, or whatever the Americans call them, so admit it; you like _Transformers,_ and not the good stuff either."

"Alright, fine," Amy sighed, giving up. "I like some of that stuff. Helps me to unwind."

"See? That wasn't that hard now?" Lita stretched her arm out, thinking about what she herself would do.

"What time is it?"

"It's about 0900hrs."

"Oh, I think I'll go back and clean my room."

"Again?"

"There's always cleaning to be done," Lita said, getting up and taking her dirty plate with her. There was a rotating conveyor belt on the far left side of the cafeteria that would take the plates back to the kitchen, where they would be washed and dried, ready for their next use. In an effort to be more environmentally friendly, the staff had put out signs saying for people to use plates when possible and to not use trays as much, as it took much more water to wash those things. Results had been mixed.

"So, you're going to stay here?"

"I might get seconds."

"You're starting to sound like Serena."

"Don't let her hear you say that," Amy giggled. Lita waved to her and left the cafeteria, heading back to her room.

* * *

Back in her room, Lita saw a mess. Well, in any normal, sane person's eyes, it was spick and span, but not for Lita. The sheets were slightly off, the drawers sticking out a little bit too far from when she opened this morning, some of the stuff on the desk was out of order…it was time to go to work.

First, the bed. Instead of simply making the bed, she completely stripped it of the blanket, sheets and all. The sheets and accessories were nothing special; bland, white colors were the order of the day here. Making the bed required two hands (at least, from Lita's experience), so with great reluctance, she put her prosthetic arm on making sure it had a snug fit. She put the fitted sheet back on, making sure that the elastic stretched out perfectly to match the standard double bed. Next, she put the top sheet on, making sure that it was evenly draped on both sides. Otherwise, it would come out kinda funny if when she would go to sleep, so it had to be perfect. Lita was using the "hospital corner" method, where the end of sheet at the foot of the bed would be tucked in between the mattress and the frame. Next, the portion of the sheet that was sticking out from the side of the bed would be folded up on top, making a triangle (and hence the term, "hospital corner"). The remaining sheet hanging loose would be then tucked under, and the corner on top of the bed draped down, making a perfect and uniform fold in the sheet. Lita had it down to a science; she had both corners made in less than thirty seconds. Before putting the blanket on, she took out a 100 yen coin from her desk and walked over to the bed. It was pedantic, and even downright petty at times (if you were in the military), but it was the standard test to see if your sheets were tight enough. With not too much force, which was saying something for Lita, she tossed the coin straight down at the sheets.

It bounced back up, and she caught it.

"Very good then," she said with a smile. The blanket went on last, with the same hospital corner method being applied here.

The pillows were next, and Lita stripped the two mid-size pillows that adorned her Spartan bed of their covers, replacing them with fresh ones, and putting the dirty covers along with the sheets, into a laundry basket, which would be collected in a day or so. She fluffed the pillows along the baseboard of the bed, and admired her work for a second.

"Hmm." She would like to get more colorful sheets and all, but having standardized equipment was government policy, sheets and beds included.

Next up, the desk. Her two pill bottles were still out, and they were quickly put away in their respective place. Some water rings had formed from letting a water bottle sit out too long, and it had stained the plastic cover on the wooden desk.

The rest of the cleaning went quickly. Dust and grime stood no chance in Lita's room, and every bit of tile, wood and glass was polished to a bright sheen. After finally polishing the glass on the window that overlooked the mountains behind the medical facility (albeit through wrought iron-bars), she took a step back and admired her work. After a shower and a change of clothes, she felt much better.

Lita checked the time on the radio on her desk; it was only 1100. There was still plenty to do during the day.

She decided to brush up on her shooting, although it was more to blow off some steam rather than to practice.

* * *

There were two shooting ranges; one was outside, which was for the higher powered weaponry and explosives, along with the killhouse, and an indoor one in the basement of the medical facility, although located a good distance away from the research laboratories and the healing solution. It was somewhat of a long walk to the shooting range, but it was well worth it.

On the ground floor, there was a hubbub of activity by the entrance. Lita wondered what the hell was going on, so she went over to the gaggle of people who were standing there.

"What's going on?" she asked the receptionist, who was sitting at her desk.

The receptionist, a woman in her mid-thirties with dark brown hair and eyes to match, was busy making a phone call, but after a second, put her hand over the receiver and spoke to Lita. "I think one of the nurses fainted. It must be the stress or something."

Lita looked back at the entrance and tried to get a glimpse at the downed person.

"Hey, you okay?" she heard someone say.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Kawasaki, really. Just a bit tired."

It was Nurse Kuroi, and Dr. Kawasaki.

"Alright people, back to work." The gaggle of people left, leaving Dr. Kawasaki to help Nurse Kuroi up.

"Oh, hello Lita," Dr. Kawasaki said, walking up to her at the reception desk with Kuroi in tow.

"What are you doing here?" Kuroi asked suspiciously. Having one of the high-powered supersoldiers near the entrance wasn't against the rules, but escape attempts were always on the minds of the staff here. Not that the SAILOR team would try it anyway; they had nothing to go back to.

"I was going down to the shooting range," Lita replied. "Are you okay?"

"I just got dizzy and fell down," Kuroi said, embarrassed. "I've been working so hard trying to get you guys up to spec and making sure that all the equipment is working correctly…"

"Well, I can try to take care of some of the work," Lita offered, but Kawasaki jumped into the conversation.  
"Sorry, Lita, but that's against the rest policy that we set up. Absolutely no working on the equipment other than firearms and paperwork. And that's limited to only four hours a day."

"You might want to talk to Amy about that," Lita suggested.

"Has she been working on the HUDs again? Dammit. I'll have a word with her right now." Kawasaki stalked off to go yell at Amy, who would probably smile and ignore him.

"Well, I hope you feel better," Lita said to Kuroi, who was walking Kawasaki run off.

"Thanks. Hope your time at the shooting range is fun and all. Oh, I think Raye is scheduled for an appointment with the psychologist at 1100hrs tomorrow. Make sure to tell her that."

"She still hasn't done that?" Lita asked. "Everyone went to therapy yesterday. Especially after what happened when we got back…"

"Maybe you can convince her to stop avoiding her. She's pretty good."

"Fine."

Kuroi looked at her watch. "Sorry, I have to get back to work." She bowed politely and scurried off to wherever she did her work at, leaving Lita to continue walking to the shooting range.

* * *

The sounds of a pistol being fired greeted Lita as she walked into the shooting range. From what it sounded like, it was a Browning Hi-Power. Not exactly hi-tech, but then again, neither was the Colt M1911, which had been around in some way, shape or form for the last 100 years or so. As she walked down the stairs leading to the range proper, she could hear Raye…singing?

"All I wanna do is BANG BANG BANG! And *chink* *ching*! And take your money!" Raye had no idea what the rapper was saying, but whatever it was, it was a very catchy tune. She had some "earpods" in, or whatever Apple wanted to call their headphones nowadays, and was happily shooting away at the paper target some 20 meters away.

"Raye, I can hear you," Lita groused, tapping her on the shoulder.

"Oh…sorry Lita. Didn't hear you there." She took off the ear protection and put the Browning on the table.

"No kidding. Mind if I join you?"

Raye shook her head. "Nah. Just ask Akamatsu over there for the weapons. We're missing the heavier stuff, as they moved most of it to the JSDF bases, but they still have some submachine guns and such."

"Thanks."

Raye put the ear protection back on and continued to shoot at the paper targets in downrange.

Lita walked over to the counter where Akamatsu had the weapons at, but wasn't paying attention at all.

"Akamatsu."

He didn't reply at first, because he had earphones in and was reading another doujinshi. Lita could barely make out the title; it said "Tea of Sagittarius."

"Hey!" Lita pounded her left hand on the counter…and caused a huge crack running the entire width of the counter. Akamatsu practically leapt out of the chair and nearly fell over, surprised by the loud bang.

"Goddammit," Akamatsu complained, righting the chair that had actually fallen over, "Lita, there's a bell on the side if you want to get my attention!"

Lita looked to the right of the booth and sure enough, there was a red button that said "Press for attendant."

"I'm going to have to get maintenance down here. Again."

"Sorry."

Akamatsu grunted his acceptance of the apology. "Well, now that you've interrupted me, what do you want?"

"You got any submachine guns?"

"Yeah."

There was an awkward moment where the two of them stood there, glaring at each other.

"Uh…which one?"

"I don't know, give me something."

"Fine." Akamatsu went to the back and grabbed an Uzi, three full magazines, ear protection, and some paper targets.

"Here. This should take care of you for awhile." He passed them over the counter and to her, glaring at the crack all the while.

"Thanks. I'll bring it back in one piece."

"You'd better." Akamatsu went back to reading his doujinshi while Lita walked over to an open stall.

Again, the Uzi wasn't the best in terms of technology; no caseless ammunition, no super self-aware bullets that would change direction or something like that, but it got the job done. Period.

She attached the target to the target hanger, and hit the button on the side of the stall to send it out to a distance of twenty five meters.

Okay, she thought. Let's do this.

Boom, headshot. A couple of rounds of semi-automatic fire ripped through the paper head of the target. A perfect shot at this range.

Next up, center of mass. Although body armor had made this sort of weapon she was carrying less effective, shooting for center of mass was an accurate and at least quick method of putting someone down. Headshots were only for expert shooters who could afford to hone their skills so much so they would snap headshots on targets and move on.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

A perfect spread of bullets, no larger than a couple of centimeters wide, was embedded in the target's chest.

Time for a new target. She hit the switch to return the target to her, and took it off the hanger, replacing it with a fresh one. This time, she sent the target out to forty meters, for a bit of a challenge.

Ejecting the magazine, she inserted a new one and chambered the round. Looking downrange at the target, she decided to have some fun for a change.

Lita flipped the selector to full auto, and depressed the trigger. It was so fun, seeing that paper target flinch and shake with the impact of thirty or so bullets being expelled at high velocity out of her death-maker.

Akamatsu wasn't impressed however. He was furious, actually.

"Lita, no automatic fire on the shooting range!" he screamed from his desk. "Doesn't ANYONE follow gun safety in here?!"  
"Sorry," Lita replied, looking embarrassed. She knew better than that…

"Sorry or not, give me the weapon. In fact, Raye, give me your weapon to and get the hell out of here."

Raye glared at him, wondering if there could be some sort of "accident" that would dispose of the range master, but that would be just more hassle.

They both cleared their weapons, ejected any chambered rounds and the magazines, safetying them and checking again to see if any of the weapons still had bullets left in them.

"Just leave them there," Akamatsu ordered.

"But you just said…" Raye began, but was cut off by Akamatsu.

"I know what I just said, but knowing my luck, one of you will trip and fire off a shot in my general direction."

Lita rolled her eyes, but left the Uzi at the shooting stall. The two of them then walked out of the shooting range, leaving Akamatsu to simmer for a couple of hours.

* * *

"Sorry about that," Lita apologized. They were walking up the stairs and onto the ground floor.

Raye shrugged. "No worries. I was getting bored anyway. Want to get lunch?"

"Um…" Lita was still full from breakfast, but she could use the company. She checked her watch on her left "wrist"; it was better to just leave it there than to constantly put in on and off on her other "real" wrist. 1200hrs.

"Sure. Sounds good to me. I'm not particular hungry, but what the hell."

"Now you're talking. Serena's probably there, stuffing her face as usual."

* * *

Serena and Mina were there, and sure enough, Serena was stuffing her face.

"Serena, Mina. How are you two doing?" Lita asked, walking up to their table with Raye in tow.

Serena yawned loudly. "I'm tired."

"You're always tired," Mina said, sipping her tea. "I'm doing good, Lita. How about you?"

"Raye and I just got kicked out of the shooting range. I kinda violated the range rules, so Akamatsu is super pissed right now."

"Fire on full automatic?" Mina guessed.

Lita smiled awkwardly. "Yeah. Shouldn't have, but it was fun."

"Just don't do it next time," Mina lightly admonished.

"Mmm-hmm," Serena added, through a mouthful of tonkatsu.

"You're such a fatass," Raye said, noting that Serena's plate was full of tonkatsu, rice, curry, tempura, miso soup and ramen.

"I really don't care," Serena shot back, taking another bite of tonkatsu. "It's all free anyway, and if I'm going to be putting my life on the line for the country, then I'm going to get all the free food I want."

Raye just rolled her eyes and walked over to the buffet line. Lita followed her, but she was only going to get coffee.

"Oh, hi again." The line cook was still there, and he was still chirpy as ever. "What can I get you?"

"Just some coffee."

"Sure, just grab a cup and I can fill you up."

Some coffee cups had magically appeared next to the plates at the buffet line; Lita didn't remember those being there this morning…

"FK in the coffee?" Lita looked at the side of her cup, and saw that one of the staff members had written that there.

"Dunno what that means," the line cook replied. He filled the cup up with coffee and stirred in cream and sugar.

"Thanks." She took the coffee cup and walked back to her table.

"Hey, just to let you know," the line cook said to her, "We've got your favorite tonight. Meatloaf and cherry pie."  
"Thanks!" That certainly made Lita a little bit happier. She went back to the table; Raye was still getting her food.

"Aren't you going to get anything else?" Mina asked, playing with her long, golden hair.

"I had a big breakfast earlier."

"With Amy, right?" Serena said. "I heard Kawasaki yelling at her outside of my room today. That's what woke me up!"

"What time did you get up anyway?"

"Unlike you, I get up at a reasonable time," Serena beamed. "1120 this morning!"

"What were you doing last night?!" Lita couldn't believe that she would still sleep in like that.

Serena scratched her head. "Well, me, Raye and Mina here had some nice sake."

"Actually, it was a couple of bottles of the stuff," Mina giggled. "We got trashed last night."

"Raye stole it from Iwasaki's office," Serena whispered. "He's going to be so pissed."

"When isn't he pissed?" Lita said back.

"True point. And what were you and Amy going last night?" Serena raised her eyebrows at the suggestive statement. "Hmm? Hmm?"

"Amy was doing her thing with technology stuff and I was asleep, thank you very much," Lita said back. She took a sip of coffee, enjoying the creamy sweet deliciousness. And the caffeine.

"Bullshit," Mina said. "I bet you two were snogging in your room last night."

"Mina, you're one to talk," Lita glared. "You're probably the most experienced one here out of all of us."

"Hey, what about me?" Serena asked.

Mina tried not to scoff too much at that. "Right…"

Lita drank so more coffee before trying to pry more information out of Mina. "So, what experiences do YOU have with guys. Or girls. Whatever." Lita was sure that Mina was an experienced professional, and her guile skills had to come from somewhere, right?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," she smiled, sipping the last of her tea. "Oh, look at the time. I've got to go meet with Nurse Kuroi. Something about another checkup or something like that."

That made Lita roll her eyes. "Yeah, sure, excuses."

Raye came back with her tray of food, which was quite similar to Serena's actually.

"Oh, and you say I'm a fatass?" Serena looked at the food, and seriously contemplated getting thirds.

"Shut up, I'm hungry," Raye glared, sitting down. As she was sitting down, Lita remembered that Nurse Kuroi wanted her to go to that psychology appointment.

"Hey, Kuroi wanted me to remind you that you have an appointment tomorrow with the psychologist."

That made Raye immediately freeze up. Her chopsticks suddenly started to tremble, and she had a faraway look on her face.

"Look, I'm sorry, that's all she wanted to say." Lita tried to make the situation better, but it was quickly spiraling out of control.

"Raye…Raye!" Mina snapped her fingers in front of her and tried to get her back to reality. "She's having a panic attack. Serena, get one of the doctors to come down here immediately."

Serena immediately bolted from her chair and went running for the hallway.

"Raye, listen to me, it's okay, you're here and we're safe," Mina said, looking her straight in the eyes. "You're fine."

"No…no…I'm not fine…grandpa…grandpa…"

Lita tried to offer her two cents. "I know you're grandpa died, but you have to at least keep it together until one of the doctors arrives, please."

"I…I…" They were quickly losing her, and they had to do something quick.

Mina came up with something. "Raye, tell me a funny story that happened with him or something like that."

That seemed to do the trick. "There was this one time, he was flirting with some of the other miko at the temple and one of them slapped him. Then I had to slap him from slapping her back…and it turned into a slapping contest…"

Dr. Kobayashi and Nurse Kuroi came flying into the cafeteria, along with Serena, a couple of medical assistants and technicians.

"I'm here, what's the problem?" he said to Mina. He took one look at Raye.

"Oh. Guys, get her to an isolation room and prepare the sedative."

"On it."

"Raye, look at me," Mina said. "These guys are going to make everything better."

"I don't want to feel better…" Raye replied softly.

"Trust me, you want to feel better. I do. Everyone does."

A medical assistant ran up with a sedative, and Nurse Kuroi prepped Raye's left arm for the injection.

Mina put her fingers in front of her mouth. "Shh…everything is going to be alright."

The assistant injected the sedative, and Raye's eyes rolled back into her head. She was out.

"Okay, let's get her onto the stretcher and get her to isolation," Kobayashi said to the gaggle of medical people there would had responded to the incident. Moving quickly, they hefted her onto the streatcher and in a flash, she was gone.

"Thanks for that," Dr. Kobayashi said to Mina and Lita.

Lita looked down at the ground in shame. "I think I might have caused it…"

"There's a lot of things that can cause panic attacks," Dr. Kobayashi said. "It's not my specialty, but this is part of the de-stressing process. Raye's been having a bad time lately, and I think skipping that psychology session was a bad idea on her part."

"I don't know what to do now." Lita looked at her now cold coffee, and wondered what could be done for her.

"I can try to talk to her, at least," she offered after a moment of thought.

"That would be good," Dr. Kobayashi agreed. "Once she's had some time to rest, I'll give you a call."

"Thanks." Dr. Kobayashi and Nurse Kuroi left, after thanking Mina once more for her good work, and they were alone again.

"That was really scary," Mina said, collecting her tray and standing up. "I hope that doesn't happen again."

Lita nodded. "Me too."

"Well, I really have to get going, and now that Kuroi-sensei has seen me here, she really wants me to get that paperwork done."

"Okay. See you later."

* * *

It was 1400hrs. Lita had another cup of coffee and went back to her room to play some games on the computer…when was the Steam sale again? Thank god for Swiss bank accounts. Maybe she would watch movies too…or do both. She was just walking down the hallway, trying to go over what had just happened in the cafeteria when she happened upon Kawasaki and Iwasaki.

"And I'm trying to keep Amy out of the labs downstairs, but she keeps…oh, hello Lita." Dr. Kawasaki was talking to Colonel Iwasaki in the hallway, and Lita had probably just walked onto an important conversation.

"I'll finish this later," he said to Iwasaki. Iwasaki nodded, and then marched off down the hall and up the stairs to his office.

"Did you tell Raye to come to the psychologist tomorrow?" he asked.

"Yes, I did. But she suffered a panic attack and she's under sedation right now."

"Oh. That's not good." He frowned a little bit. "She really must be going through a lot."

Lita could only nod at his statement. "I'm going to be talking with her later today, once she wakes up. Perhaps talk some sense into her."

Kawasaki seemed to agree with that. "That sounds good." He paused for a second, trying to collect his thoughts.

"I'm sorry what happened Monday," he sighed. "I guess the stress of the missions really got to everyone." Kawasaki tried not to mention the fact that he had suggested that they shouldn't do more surgery on them, or anything for that matter. But after a nice "makeup" session with Nurse Kuroi and a talking to by Dr. Kobayashi made him at least agree to the psychologist. They had her on standby, but they weren't exactly sure how to use her in this type of situation. So they just stuck her with the four SAILOR team members that had shown up on Tuesday and let her do her thing. Somehow, it made everything better, at least temporarily.

"It did. And with Raye's grandfather dying and all…she's a bit shook up."

"Well, if you could get her to agree to see the psychologist tomorrow, that would be extreme helpful."

"I'll try."

"Thanks."

With that, Dr. Kawasaki was running off toward his office, trying to get yet more paperwork done.

* * *

"Dr. Kobayashi paging Miss Kino. Dr. Kobayashi paging Miss Kino, please meet in the Isolation ward." The voice over the PA system brought Lita back into reality.

"Well, looks like Raye is up." Lita powered down her computer and walked toward the door. That game of _Civilization V_ had really taken up her time; it was 1700hrs. Say what you want about video games, but there was something to be said about one that could take your time just like that. Moving quickly, she sprinted toward the place where Raye was being kept.

"Lita, thanks for coming down here so quickly," Dr. Kobayashi said, as she entered the isolation ward. "She's just lying still in there."

Lita peered into the small window that was on the door to the isolation cell. True to form, Raye was just lying there, unmoving. "Okay. I don't come out, send in the rescue team."

That got a chuckle. "Will do. Just buzz the button on the wall there and we'll let you out."

Lita frowned at that. "I don't remember those being there…"

"We just put them in."

"Uh-huh." Lita gave Dr. Kobayashi a look, but opened the door and went into the room.

* * *

The whiteness of the room was blinding; memories of her first stay in these god-awful rooms came flashing back. Pushing those aside however, Lita went to Raye's side and knelt down.

"Hey, how are you doing?" she asked.

No response.

"If you don't want to say anything, then, you don't have to. But we're here for you, if you need us." She took Raye's hand and held it there. Minutes passed as the two of them just lay there, not moving, not talking, not doing anything.

"Your hand is kinda cold," Raye suddenly complained. Lita looked at which hand she was using; predictably, she was holding Raye's hand with her prosthetic one.

"Sorry." She switched hands out. Hoping that would at least do some good, Lita pressed on.

"Raye, look, you have to see someone."

"I don't want to fucking see anyone!" Raye spat back. "Just leave me alone."

"Raye…"

"Piss off, Lita," Raye snarled.

"You don't mean that." Lita stayed put.

There was more hand holding. Despite Raye's stubbornness, she was really hurting. Everyone was, and the breakdown at the cafeteria was just the tip of the iceberg.

"I'm here for you," Lita cooed. "Just…let us help you. The psychologist…I know it sounds strange, but it was helpful. Just go, you don't have anything to lose, okay? It's not like they're going to put you on meds again…"

Lita didn't know how long she stayed there, just letting Raye decompress after a very stressful event. It was what some people needed after that sort of an event. Some people lashed out and screamed and fought. That was more up Raye's ally, but this was personal. So she shut it all in and bottled it up. The problem with that was at some point, was all going to explode, and at not at an opportune time. The most little of things could set it off; a snide remark here, a person cutting in line, a hurtful email could release a torrent of emotions that would be impossible to contain. Lita's remark about the appointment just caused her to batten down the hatches and to close off the world, but it wasn't going to help. Not when there was so much at stake here.

An hour or so passed before Lita got up. Her legs were a bit stiff, but no matter.

"I'm going to get something to eat. I'll be back."

She started walking toward the door when Raye said something.

"I'll go."

It was a quiet statement, unlike the normal Raye who was loud and proud. Lita just nodded at Raye. She had made her decision.

"Come on, let's go get dinner."

That relaxed her and soothed whatever tensions and emotions that had been going on in Raye's mind for the day. She smiled, finally. "Now you're talking."

Lita hit the button to exit, and the door unlocked.

"Thanks, Lita," Raye said to her, grateful.

"No problem."

* * *

The rest of the night went without any drama or action, besides accidentally dropping her cherry pie on Amy. Lita retired to her room, exhausted from the long day and the events that had just transpired. Closing the door behind her, she popped off her arm and set it on the stand next to her bed. After showering and changing into her nightgown, Lita hopped into bed and turned out the light. Pulling the covers over her, she felt the coolness of the sheets wash over her and rock her to sleep.

Today had been a good day, after all.


	96. Omake: The FDA Report

**Omake Chapter: The FDA Report**

**1000hrs, 15 August 2014, White Oak, Maryland, United States.**

* * *

**Food and Drug Administration**

**Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research**

**Cellular and Gene Therapy Products**

* * *

**Abridged Analysis and Report on "Healing Solution Mark I"**

**For Press Release**

* * *

**Background: **

The development of the Healing Solution was first developed by the Japanese Government, but was taken over by the Nakanishi Biological Research Labs, which was a top secret and highly compartmentalized organization of the group, only known to the top company officers. This Healing Solution was created sometime in 2011 or 2012, but specific data concerning the research and development of this particular solution has been lost. However, the data with the specific makeup, sequencing and production methods was recovered after the battle for the Nakanishi stronghold on the island of Socotra was concluded. The solution was issued almost immediately to Nakanishi private military contractors in large quantities in 2013, as well as the United States Military who had significant contracts with the Nakanishi Group. The Nakanishi Group sold the fluid exclusively to the military at a high markup, making millions of dollars in the process. The FDA was excluded from testing this solution due to political interference, and was issued to troops in the field nonetheless. Despite the involvement of the Nakanishi Group in developing this solution, many other pharmaceutical companies have been producing the Healing Solution, Mark I which was released in an open source format earlier this year by the US Government on the experience with the solution when issued to the military. The FDA approved of this release and for use on humans, seeing that from the usage in the military was having no ill effects and that it had the huge potential to save lives. However, after several deaths resulting from the use of Healing Solution, Mark I in several military hospitals last year that were recently reported by media outlets, and the uptick in cancer cases among both civilian and military personnel has led the FDA to reexamine its evaluation on the Healing Solution, Mark I.

* * *

**Analysis:**

The fluid is made up of several different organic compounds, which can be found in the appendix adjoining this particular report. One ounce is sufficient to treat minor gashes, cuts and bruises, completely healing them within thirty seconds. Forty gallons are required to treat the most extreme cases, including burns, severed limbs and internal injuries. This sort of treatment requires that the patient be completely immersed in the solution, which is then disposed of after thirty seconds. In the case of the military, personnel were immersed in special tanks containing about forty gallons of the fluid in order to treat burns, severed limbs and other injuries suffered in the line of duty. Most of these personnel were then released, but then had to come back to the hospital complaining of pain and other maladies five to six months later.

A six month test on lab rats and mice was conducted from 1 January 2014, when the healing solution was first given to the FDA until 1 June 2014. During this time, test animals were subjected to numerous injuries on a weekly basis, from falls, to cuts, and burns. Test animals were then exposed to one ounce of the solution that would cure them of their injuries.

The results showed that cancerous growth appeared in almost one-hundred percent of the cases at about five months, which were untreatable even with the Healing Solution, and subsequently led to death of the test animals. The types of cancer were seemingly random, with lung, stomach, brain and throat cancers occurring most often. The lab animals suffered excruciating pain whilst in the last stage of the testing period, and required more and more fluid to treat them until the dosage became so high that it was impossible to treat them. This was not the case for the vast majority of the test; it was only until about the fifth month that the vast majority of the lab animals developed the cancerous conditions and perished. Other effects were that the animals would often refuse food, their reproductive health dropped dramatically, with sperm and egg counts reaching zero in all cases, and experienced disorientation and became aggressive, causing them to act erratically. These matched with the cases reported by military personnel last year when being treated with the Healing Solution for an extended period of time.

* * *

**Conclusion:**

The Healing Solution Mark I is to be immediately discontinued by all pharmaceutical companies currently in possession of the Healing Solution formula. Persons who have been using the Healing Solution, Mark I, should cease dosage immediately and contact their physicians for examinations and treatment, if necessary. Prolonged exposure to this substance is an extreme health risk to patients; under no circumstances should this solution be used to treat open wounds or cancerous growths. Even the small one ounce tubes pose a significant risk to humans, and might make wounds even worse in the long run.

More testing is needed to examine the causes of the cancerous growths, and for other effects that the Healing Solution might possess.


	97. Omake: The Coup

**Omake Chapter: The Coup.**

**1500hrs, 16 December 2013, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan**

_" Any person subject to this code (chapter) who— (1) with intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refuses, in concert with any other person, to obey orders or otherwise do his duty or creates any violence or disturbance is guilty of mutiny; (2) with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority, creates, in concert with any other person, revolt, violence, or other disturbance against that authority is guilty of sedition…"Art. 94. (§ 894.) 2004 Mutiny or Sedition, United States Uniform Code of Military Justice._

* * *

"Wait, back up to the part about the nuclear weapons."

Luna and Artemis had gathered the three other SAILOR team members in the conference room. Lita and Raye were sitting in swivel chairs, with Raye annoyingly rocking back and forth until Lita stopped her, and Serena pacing about on the floor, asking most of the questions.

"There are two nuclear weapons in the United States," Luna said. "The Nakanishi Group plans to use them in order to decapitate the US leadership and the economy at the same time."

"One nuke for the leaders, one for the money," Serena said. "This is…"

"…unbelievable, I know." Artemis still couldn't believe it himself, but the facts were there.

"What are Amy and Mina doing about it?" Lita asked.

"They're getting some support in the American government to try to derail this entire thing. They can't stop everything, but they can at least try to stop the nuclear attacks."

"Nu-cli-arr," Artemis mocked, imitating former U.S. President George W. Bush. A glare from Luna quickly put an end to that.

"So, they're going to the US?" Serena said. She tapped the floor with her (prosthetic) left foot, nervous about what was going on.

"Yep. I just booked them a flight there and they should be…" Luna checked her tablet computer. "Looks like they're in Virginia right now, and are getting ready to assault the location of the WMD."

"Is there anyone backing them up?" Lita asked. She was worried about those two, and without any support…

"It's just them, for now." Luna noted the worried expression on Lita's face, and moved to reassure her. "Lita, they'll be fine. They'll be able to take down the WMD with no problems, I can assure you of it."

It wasn't much good, as the image of Amy and Mina being vaporized by a rising mushroom cloud was quickly flashing by in Lita's head.

It was Raye who asked the million dollar question.

"So, what do you want us to do about it?"

Luna closed her eyes and thought about what she was about to ask the three SAILOR members. It was sheer lunacy…but then again, this entire program had been crazy to begin with. There was no other way but to continue forward.

"I want you...I want you to take down the Nakanishi Group and help restore order to the Japanese government. Starting with taking over this facility."

There was a moment of stunned silence. The magnitude of the request was immense. But at last, they had a chance to form their own destiny.

"Sounds good to me." Lita couldn't stand being treated like a mere object any more.

"I'll do it too," Raye chirped in. "Better than doing nothing. Plus, if Amy and Mina are out there, putting their lives on the line, then it's time we'd better do the same."

That left just Serena.

"What do you think, Serena?" Luna asked. Four sets of eyes focused on the blonde girl, who was leaning against the table, in deep thought.

"Damn." This entire god-awful situation sucked all around, and she guessed that this would be probably the one where they would be less likely to lose everything. She looked up at the four other people in the room.

"Okay, I'm in. Let's take these guys down."

That brought smiles to everyone's faces. It was done.

"That's good," Luna nodded. "Serena, I'm going to be taking orders from you now, since you outrank me."

"Wait…I what?" Serena had to rack her mind for a second before realizing that yes, she did indeed have a rank. "Oh. That's right. What do you suggest we do?"

Luna's response was immediate. "We need to show the rest of the people here what's going on. We can't take this facility without the support of the medical and security staff."

"Do it," Serena unhesitatingly said. "What can we do?"

"You three stay here. I'll get the rest of people to come and see the video. Artemis, follow me."

Luna and Artemis ran out of the room, heading at full tilt toward Dr. Kobayashi's office.

* * *

In his office, Kobayashi was thinking about cutting out early and taking it easy for the next couple of days. He had expended a lot of political capital on getting the SAILOR team offline for a bit, and he figured that he needed to get things in order before he found his head on the metaphorical chopping block.

That was blissful thought was interrupted by Luna practically breaking down the door to his office on the fourth floor.

"Dr. Kobayashi, get Nurse Kuroi and Dr. Kawasaki," she gasped. In the background, Artemis was close behind, also gasping for breath. "In fact, get the entire research staff here and the security team. Now."

"Uh, hello," he replied, confused. "What for?"

"This is extremely important. You'll see."

"Okay, I'll just put an announcement over the PA system and…"

"NO!" Luna almost screamed. "I mean, no, don't do that. We need everyone except Colonel Iwasaki and Akamatsu."

That immediately raised red flags in Kobayashi's mind. "Why don't you want those two knowing about it?"

"They don't need to know right now," Luna tersely replied.

Iwasaki's recent threats and the PM's disowning of him weighed on Kobayashi's mind. Here he was again, without much support and capital to help him through rough times…well, it was time to take destiny into his own hands. Enough sitting back and watching.

"This better be good," he said to her, reaching for the phone on his desk and dialing Kawasaki. "Kawasaki? It's Kobayashi. I need you to get Nurse Kuroi and the rest of the research staff up to the…?" He looked at Luna for directions.

"The conference room on the second floor."

"The conference room on the second floor. No, do not tell Colonel Iwasaki or Akamatsu about this. All of them, yes, and make it snappy. This is important."

He hung up the phone, wondering if this was the right path to take. He didn't know what Luna was planning, but whatever it was, it probably involved a hostile takeover of this facility.

"Okay, call the security chief," Luna ordered.

Kobayashi picked up the receiver again and dialed the security desk.

"Chief of security," a gruff voice said. "Kuraudo Ooishi speaking."

"Ooishi, this is Kobayashi." He gripped the receiver tightly. "I need you to get all the security people to meet on the conference room on the second floor."

"Uh, why would you want me to do that?" Ooishi asked, not exactly pleased.

"This is extremely important," Kobayashi said. "Our lives might be at stake here."

"Look, if you need some protection, that's fine, I'll just chop over some officers from patrol and…"

"Kuraudo!" Kobayashi roared into the receiver. Luna and Artemis had never heard him get angry like that. "Get. Everyone. To. The. Conference. Room," he said slowly.

"Okay, fine. You mean, everyone available?"

"No, everyone. Pull everyone off of patrol. We need everyone."

"Kobayashi…"

"Just do it. And don't tell Akamatsu or Iwasaki."

"Uh…okay." He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, confused what was going on. Not telling Iwasaki or Akamatsu? Pulling all of the security off of patrol and to a meeting room? This was extremely suspicious, but Kobayashi didn't seem to be under duress; in fact, he seemed in charge, like he was supposed to be.

Fine, just this once. He reached for his radio, and made sure to block Akamatsu and Iwasaki from hearing the radio call.

"All units, all units, this is Big Bird 1. Recall immediately to base and prepare for immediate debriefing."

* * *

After cramming everyone into the conference room (about sixty people in all), Luna got in front of the room to make her announcement.

"I know that this might seem like an inconvenience, especially with everyone going home for the winter break, but this is extremely important. Bear with me for a couple minutes, and then you can make your decision."

She nodded to Artemis, who had set up the video to be projected onto the wall. He hit the play button.

There was complete silence as the video of the Nakanishi company officers plotted their evil plan out, their casual and blasé attitude toward human life shocking the medical personnel especially. They had spent their entire lives for the purpose of saving and preserving human life and now these idiots were going to kill thousands of people in the name of profit. Their actions even disgusted Kobayashi. He couldn't believe that he had been working for those people, especially so with Beryl, with her promises and money and sweet talk.

"Everyone, listen," Luna said to the group after the video had stopped playing. "What I'm about to ask you might sound radical, dangerous, and completely against what you've been trained or taught to do."

She paused for a moment, hoping that everyone in the group had already figured out what she was going to ask.

"I'm asking everyone to take over this facility from the government until the situation can be corrected."

There was a slight gasp from the audience, but for the most part, everyone kept their cool. Luna needed not to convince people of the rightness of their actions, but perhaps to push the ones leaning on the edge over. She closed for eyes for a second, then opened them back up and spoke to the people gathered.

* * *

"We obviously are working in the interests of the Nakanishi Group. This is unacceptable. We do not work for a corporation; we work for the great nation of Japan. The Japan that has suffered so much in the aftermath of the WWII, that we have paid for dearly; not only from the fiery wrath of nuclear warfare, but in terms of our dignity and reputation. The atrocities that we committed during that period still cloud our relationships with countries even to this day. We suffered from the decisions of uneducated and short-sighted people destroyed our economy in such a way that we have not been able to recover in the last twenty years. We suffered from disaster after disaster; Minamata, Niigata, Kobe, Aum Shinrikyo, and the Tohoku Earthquake. We all lost someone or know someone who lost someone in that disaster. But have we given up? Have we surrendered our dignity because our walls crumble and houses fall? We do not descend into anarchy and chaos at the first sign of disaster. We hold our ground. Shikata ga nai, is our statement. It cannot be helped. But this. This is something that we can do something about. These people think that they can gain money by stabbing people in the back, especially those who helped us in our time of need. They think that they can "help" us by making a profit from the suffering of others. People, that is not what I signed up for when I joined the JSDF. That is not what you did when you swore to do no harm. That is not what you did when you swore to uphold law and order in your towns and cities. I will not allow another tragedy to befall this nation if I have anything to do with it. We are still paying the consequences of people who led our nation to war against the Chinese, the British, the Russians, the Americans. And the consequences of that pale in comparison to what will happen if the Nakanishi Group goes through with their dastardly plan. For if they do, generation upon generations of our descendants will look up at us and say "They could have done something." But now, we can change what they say. They will say "They did do something. They stopped evil in its tracks."

* * *

Luna took a deep breath. She was exhausted from the long speech that she never intended to give; it just rolled off of her tongue, it seemed.

Artemis saw that she was completely worn out and stepped up to the plate.

"Let's put this to a vote," he suggested. He looked at Luna, who had just taken a seat; Serena gave it up to her, obviously impressed with her oratory skills. She nodded.

"All in favor of restoring order?" he asked the audience.

There were so many hands that Artemis lost count.

"All against?"

No hands.

"Then it's settled. We take back our government."

That brought a sigh of relief from the audience.

Luna sprang into action after the vote. There was no time to lose.

"Where are Col. Iwasaki and Akamatsu?" she asked the crowd. "Anyone?"

"Ma'am," one of the orderlies said. "They're both up in his office on the fifth floor."

"Okay, those two are the ones we have to worry about. Iwasaki can bring this entire thing down if he gets word out to the MoD or the Joint Chiefs."

"I can take some of the security personnel and detain him," Ooishi offered.

"That'll draw too much attention," Lita replied. "Me, Raye and Serena can take them down." Serena nodded at her, applauding her initiative; she had been thinking that exact same thing. Raye was just happy to take that asshole Iwasaki down.

If they had super soldiers at their command, then they might as well use them, Luna thought to herself.

"We need to move fast. Kuroi, get some sedatives from the medical lab and give them to Lita and Raye here."

"On it."

"Lita, Serena, Raye, go with her."

She didn't need to say much else. They sprinted out of the room.

* * *

"This should be enough to keep them down for some time," Kuroi said, filling two syringes with a sedative. She gave them to Lita and Raye, who gingerly held onto them. Lita hoped that she didn't accidentally inject herself with one…

"Let's do this," Serena said. "Raye, take the fire escape to the fifth floor so we can cut off and surround them."

Raye nodded. "Got it."

"Anything else I should do?" Kuroi asked.

"Yes," Serena replied. "Have the security team cut off all phone and internet access to the fifth floor and have two teams standing by on the fourth floor just in case things go south."

"Got it. Is there more?"

"I think that's it."

"I'm on it." Kuroi sprinted out of the room, adrenaline flowing through her veins. It was all quite exciting, really.

A few minutes later, everyone was in position. Serena and Lita were just coming out of the stairwell; they hid behind a corner and observed Iwasaki and Akamatsu come out of their office.

"Okay, I see them," Serena whispered over to Lita. "Are you ready for this?"

"Yeah."

Serena tapped on her HUD, which was a pair of glasses that she had been wearing earlier, and contacted Raye.

"Raye, are you in position?"

There was a moment of silence, then Raye responded.

"I'm in position, on your go."

"Alright, once we start talking to Iwasaki and Akamatsu, come out of the stairwell and yell at them or something."

"Roger that."

Serena had to make sure everything was in place before things went down. "Luna."

"All security teams are in position and the phone and internet connections have been shut off." Luna was on top of her game.

"Very good. Let's go."

Lita and Serena started walking down the hall, following Iwasaki and Akamatsu out of their office.

"…and it smelled kind of funky…oh, hello." Iwasaki glared at the two girls who were just down the hall.

"What are you doing here?"

Serena fidgeted where she stood. "Um…nothing."

"Nothing, huh?"

She blushed. "Sorry, we were just taking a walk, you know? Since we didn't decide to go to Hong Kong?"

"Yes, about that…" Iwasaki thought that was an incredibly bad idea, and it had been reported to him from Luna that they had run into some major problems getting the girls back from there. Something about delayed flights and some murder cases at the Mitsui branch down there…it was a mess, that's for sure.

"Of course. If you would excuse us," Iwasaki said to them.

"Hey Serena!" Raye yelled at the end of the hall. Iwasaki turned around to see who it was, but Akamatsu hesitated for a second. This was really fishy. He had not seen the girls together a lot, and with one girl in front gaining the attention of them, then with Serena and Lita to their backs…it was an ambush.

Too late though.

Lita delivered a kick to the groin that left Akamatsu doubled over in pain, unable to do much of anything. Raye was rushing in to detain him, so that just left Iwasaki.

He was backing up, trying to get away, but Lita tackled him American football style, and pinned him to the floor.

"Goddammit get off of me! That's an order!" He flailed about, which did as much damage as it sounded like.

"We don't take orders from you now," Lita hissed.

"That's right." From the corner of his eye, Iwasaki could see Serena holding a needle in her hand.

"Have a nice nap," she snarled at him. "Lita, hold this fucker down."

"With pleasure." Lita, with her left arm, pinned Iwasaki's left arm down on the ground. He grunted in pain and tried to resist, but she was just too strong.

Moving quickly, Serena found a nice fat vein and injected the tranquilizer into his system. Iwasaki was out in seconds, his head thumping quite loudly against the ground.

"Sweet dreams," Lita muttered. She let go of the rest of Iwasaki, which flopped to the ground with a thud.

"Serena, I've got Akamatsu under control here," Raye said. She had also given him a tranquilizer shot, and he was fast asleep on the floor.

Serena tapped on her HUD to report the good news to Luna.

"Luna, Iwasaki and Akamatsu have been detained, over."

"Good work, bring them to the medical isolation ward where you were first held."

"With pleasure."

* * *

Luna and Artemis immediately set up a command and control facility the much vaunted conference room and started to issue orders. The three SAILOR team members had dragged poor Akamatsu and Iwasaki to the isolation ward, and had much fun tossing them into the cells they had first been placed in. Now, they were listening to Luna bark out orders to make sure everything went smoothly.

"Ooishi, lock this entire place down and make sure that no one gets in or out until the situation is resolved. Dr. Kobayashi, collect the medical personnel in the basement and wait further instructions."

"What do we do then?" Kobayashi asked.

"I'm not quite sure, that's why I'm asking you to wait. It's mostly in the hands of the security personnel now, so we'll need you to rest up for the big battle that comes…"

He frowned at the prospect of a fight. "If there is such a battle, although with whom, I'm unsure of."

"Me too, Dr. Kobayashi," Luna said. "Me too."

Artemis was combing through the massive amount of data collected by the SAILOR team and the Nakanishi Group; this had been obtained by exploiting a contract that the JSDF had with the Nakanishi Group, and gaining access to some of their databases through JSDF connections.

"Luna, I'm not getting any critical information, but I think I have an idea where to get it."

"Where?"

"Well…it's kinda obvious. Their HQ in Tokyo."

Luna facepalmed herself. Of course! They would keep most of their sensitive and precious information there until they could transfer it to somewhere else and sanitize their Tokyo HQ.

"Serena, Raye, Lita," she said, turning to them. "How do you feel like going to Tokyo?"

"What for?" Lita asked.

Luna explained to them that information they might need pertaining to the Nakanishi Group would most likely, be at their headquarters.

"Right for the heart of the dragon, hmm?" Serena said, pondering the plan. "Sounds risky."

"I like it," Raye added.

"I don't think we have much choice," Lita said, "But we can't just stay here and twiddle our thumbs. We have to do something, and this sounds like the best option."

"Fine. Let's go to Tokyo then." Serena was anxious at the prospect of more fighting, but this was probably for the best.

Luna tapped some things on a tablet computer, making notes for the plan to succeed. "I'll have a car set up in the garage. Meet me there once you've equipped yourselves."

* * *

Thirty minutes later, the three SAILOR team members were assembled in the garage, packing lots of weapons which would have made even small armies quake. Their ride however…

"You have got to be shitting me," Raye said. Instead of a decent sized car, all there was a small Suzuki Kei-car for their use.

"I'm not riding that thing all the way to Tokyo," she bitched. "Can't we get something else?"

Luna shook her head. "No time. Iwasaki moved all of our larger vehicles to a JSDF base last week.

"Why can't we take a helicopter?"

"It'll take up too much time getting one here," Luna said, handing Lita some ammunition that she had brought up from the armory. "And it'll draw too much attention. I'm sorry, but this is the only way to do it without drawing too much attention."

"Why can't we…"

"Raye, please shut up," Serena glared. Raye glared at her, but complied.

"Are we all set?" Serena asked, checking her M4-CQB.

Everyone nodded.

"SAILOR team, good luck," Luna said, bowing to them.

"We'll be trying to back you up," Artemis added. "Hopefully, things will get better from here on out."

"Thanks guys." Raye, Lita and Serena piled into the car, weapons, gear and all. Raye turned the ignition key, and within a couple of seconds, the car had driven out of the garage and toward its destination in Tokyo.


	98. Omake: Prasad's night on the town

**Omake Chapter: Prasad's night on the town.**

**1930hrs, 11 January 2014, Church Street/Brigade Road, Bangalore, India.**

_"We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities." Indira Gandhi._

_"Many millions of Indian youth do not have good jobs or affluent parents. They cannot afford the goods that dance so tantalizingly in front of their eyes on television." Mira Kamdar, Planet India._

* * *

The request had been an unusual one, for Sergeant…or shall we now say, Staff Sergeant Neela Prasad. After adding another chevron to her sleeve, she had been getting used to commanding a desk rather than being out in the field, but that was okay with her. It was always nice getting out there and beating the ever-living shit out of some child prostituting bastard, but if her talents were better off behind a desk, then so be it.

"Prasad." Prasad looked up from her paperwork to see Colonel Shanthi Krishnan looking down at her.

"I'm sorry ma'am," Prasad replied, standing up at attention before being waved off by Col. Krishnan.

"Not a problem. I've got a request for you."

"Yes ma'am, what is it?" It really wasn't like she could turn it down anyway, but oh well.

"Tomorrow on Saturday, I'm going to be meeting some important people from out of town. I would like you and Lt. Iyer to accompany me to the meeting place and to provide security."

"Me?" Prasad asked. "Er…of course. I'll do it."

"Thank you," Krishnan said back. "Lt. Iyer will pick you up from your quarters tomorrow, and you'll be briefed on the way there. You will be compensated for your time."

"Of course…" Prasad stammered out before Krishnan left, leaving her confused.

Now she was standing in front of the barracks, wondering what the hell was going on. Where were they going exactly? Who were they meeting? How long would it take?

Lt. Iyer pulled up in a swanky blue Suzuki Eritga, newly purchased by the 108th SIDF for their more covert operations.

"Evening, Prasad," she said, parking the car and getting out. "You can't go out looking like that."

She pointed to the khaki uniform that Prasad was wearing. "We need to keep a lower profile and blend in. I brought you these." She pulled some black slacks, and matching jacket, with a white blouse.

"They're in your size, I checked with SSgt. Chowdary about that."

Prasad frowned at the Western-style attire; besides the uniform that she wore everyday, the only other piece of Western clothing she had was a pair of jeans given to her by the NGO that helped raise her before she left to go work for the 108th. Even then, she didn't wear them, preferring to wear the Salwar Kameez or even saris, if she was feeling up to the task.

"You'll be fine," Iyer reassured, sensing Prasad's discomfort. "Go get changed, I'll wait right here."

Prasad took the clothes and hurried back inside. Five minutes later, she emerged, looking more like a student in an IT college than a soldier. The jacket and blouse covered her figure quite nicely, and the slacks fit snugly, but not too tight.

"Your shoes are fine," Iyer said to her, checking her out. "You look pretty good."

"Um…thanks." Prasad wasn't quite sure what to make of the clothing still.

"And here you go." The last thing that Iyer gave to her was a purse, holding a Browning Hi-Power and a couple spare magazines, just in case.

"How many different kinds of pistols do we have here?" Prasad wondered, seeing that everything from the Browning Hi-Power she had in her purse, the P226, the Glock 17, and even the old Webley Revolvers were still in service with the 108th.

"I have no idea. Chowdary keeps all of that in check."

After making sure that she was all squared away, Prasad got in the passengers' side (on the left side, not the right) and Iyer drove off toward Brigade Road.

Brigade Road, or informally, Brigades, was the swanky, hip place of Bangalore, filled to the brim with Western stores selling their wares to the ever eager under thirty crowd with money to burn. Nearby, snazzy bars and restaurants catered to the demands of the young, with plenty of booze and burgers on standby. As usual, the McDonalds and KFC were packed at all hours, but that still didn't mean the local places got their due as well.

"Where are we going?" Prasad asked, watching the ever busy Indian traffic zip by them.

"This Chinese restaurant called Three-Quarters Chinese."

"Chinese food…?" Prasad tried not to scrunch her face up too much. She didn't exactly like Chinese food all that much.

"You'll like it, don't worry."

Prasad wasn't convinced, but it really wasn't her call at this point. Iyer drove the car for short trip over to Brigade Street, passing by the large amount of traffic clogging up MG Road and making a left onto Brigade Street. The large neon signs, the big plate glass windows showing things that in a million years, Prasad would never be able to afford, and the general youthfulness and vibrancy was a shock to Prasad, even though it was part of India. There was nothing like this back in her humble hometown of Raichur, and it would probably never be.

Iyer had to bribe one of the security guards on MG road to get a parking spot, and soon after, they were walking toward Three-Quarters Chinese, which was located on Church Street branching off from Brigade Road. Along the way, Prasad saw a Ruby Tuesdays, which puzzled her immensely; what was so Ruby about Tuesday anyway? Just beyond that restaurant, the large sign for Three-Quarters Chinese popped up on the left. Prasad and Iyer walked up to the door, which were held open at the moment by some doorstops.

"Hello Madam, welcome to Three-Quarters Chinese. How many in your party?" the hostess asked in English as they walked in.

Iyer obviously responded. "Well, I've got a reservation, under "Iyer"?"

The hostess tapped on her computer. "Chandra?"

"No, Kavitha."

"Okay, let me check." Prasad couldn't really describe the hostess at the restaurant; she looked like she was from Mizoram or something like that. She had seen many people from the Seven Sisters, who looked more Chinese than they did Indian, but hadn't had much interaction with them during the course of her job.

"Alright, Kavitha. Seven in your party?"

"That is correct."

"Follow me please."

The hostess led the two of them to the back to the restaurant where a booth had been set aside for them. She set the menus on the table and motioned for them to sit.

"Enjoy your meal."

Iyer nodded to the hostess, and she left. Prasad gingerly set herself down at the end of the table and looked around the restaurant; it was busy but not too terribly crowded. The restaurant was huge in comparison to some of the other places she had been to, but the ceiling was extremely high and there was enough space to fit 300 people at least.

Iyer's phone buzzed. She took it out of her purse and stared at the screen.

"It looks like she's going to be a couple minutes late," she said. "She said to get her a gin and tonic and whisky for the rest of the guests."

"Uh…okay." Prasad didn't see what that had to do with her, but maybe Iyer was just thinking out loud.

Her phone buzzed again.

"Who is it this time?" Prasad asked, flagging down the waiter who was coming over to their table.

"It's my cousin. She's in hospital because of the entire terrorist attack thing."

"What's her name?"

Iyer was hesitant on that question. "Um…look, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but she was in Chennai when a bomb went off."

"Oh…I'm sorry."

"No one was killed, but she was very gravely injured. I'm a little bit worried, but without our efforts, many more people could have been killed."

"Well, we did the best we could, and I hope your cousin gets better," Prasad offered, still feeling a bit awkward.

"Thanks." It was weird, hearing that come out of her commanding officer, but even COs were people too, no matter how distant they seemed.

"Looks like Col. Krishnan is here."

Prasad turned around to see Col. Krishnan come into the restaurant, along with three other men. One was a medium sized man, with balding hair dressed in a long, flowing teal colored Kurta, with black slacks and a Nehru jacket, topped with a white Gandhi cap. That meant only one thing; he was a politician.

The other two men were sharply dressed white guys…they looked like they worked for a big IT company or something to that extent. Tailored suits, pressed shirts, snappy sunglasses with briefcases and even gold cufflinks. They lived a world apart than Prasad, who had grown up in rural India, with little to no infrastructure, including running water and electricity. These guys road around Bangalore in chauffeured cars with tinted windows, ignoring the poor people right outside their windows with not a care in the world. Behind them, a five man security detail followed quite obviously, with equally high end tailored suits and dark sunglasses. Prasad figured that they were also packing weapons as well. Two of them were seated near the entrance of the restaurant, while the other three sat at a table nearby. Prasad could hear the politician talking quite loudly, even for Indian standards.

"…and that would be very nice Colonel, it does smell at bit strange…ah, I see you've already brought drinks for us!"

Krishnan was out of her uniform, wearing a conservative, but comfortable red sari, complete with a matching Choli, and a dazzling pallau that was gold-patterned. It was draped casually down her left shoulder, to show it off to the rest of the world. "Yes Chief Minister, I informed my people about your drink order," Col. Krishnan said politely back to the CM. They walked over to the table, and Krishnan gave introductions.

"Chief Minister, this is Staff Sergeant Neela Prasad and Lieutenant Kavitha Iyer. They're probably some of the best soldiers I have in this unit."

"Namaskar," Prasad said to him, clasping her palms together and performing the standard Indian greeting. She tried to bend down and touch his feet, which the CM allowed. He was, after all, the one in charge. She wondered why the CM was travelling light; usually, a massive gaggle of people surrounded the CM at all times, but today, no one even batted an eyelash at his presence.

"Namaskar," the CM said to her. At least he was polite. Most politicians wanted nothing to do with the common classes except when it came to voting time.

Lieutenant Iyer did the same, and again, the CM was polite yet aloof in his interactions with them.

"This is a nice place you've picked out for us," one of the men in suits said to the CM. "Isn't that right Tom?"

"Yeah. Lots better than some of the places back home, that's for sure." Prasad couldn't exactly understand them, but they sounded American.

The six of them sat down at the table, with the CM's security team watching intently from their nearby table.

"Look, Robert…" the CM started to say to one of the white men, but was cut off, quite rudely.

"Please, just call me Bob."

"Okay, 'Bob'," the CM said to him, not exactly comfortable with his casual manner.

"I understand that the Naxalites are giving you more trouble nowadays," "Bob" said to the CM. Especially after that debacle on the 17th of last month."

"We were very lucky," the CM said to the man named "Bob." "Our Colonel Krishnan here, along with the 108th South Indian Defense force, was able to repel most of the attackers and capture a good deal of them."

"I'm sure that the Chief Minister is glad to have such a force on hand," "Tom" piped up.

"Yes, well, it was my idea, after all." Ego stroking was always a great way to get what you wanted, especially from politicians.

"Uh, excuse me…"

Everyone looked up to see a waiter standing at the foot of the table, waiting for their dinner order. "Can I take your order?"

"Um, give us a minute, why don't you?" Col. Krishnan politely said.

"Ahem, anyway," the CM continued, "We're worried after the terrorist attacks here that we won't be getting enough weaponry for our defence force here. What can you give us?"

"Are they clear to hear this?" Bob jerked his head at Iyer and Prasad.

"Yes," Col. Krishnan said. "Iyer has been cleared, and while Prasad has the proper credentials, she can't understand you."

"Oh. That's one way of putting it. Anyway..." Bob cleared his throat and got out his tablet computer, yet another iPad.

"My company can provide the necessary equipment, well, let's see what you need."

He tapped a few icons and read off a list that had been prepared for him earlier that day.

"Well, this certainly doable. 1000 M16A4s, 300 M203s, 100 MG4s, 200 Glock 30s, 200 MP5A5s, with ammunition for everything. Class IIA and Class III body armor, reflex sights, cleaning oil, moisture proof containers for storage…That won't be a problem at all."

"That's just for the unit here in Bangalore," Colonel Krishnan pointed out. "If all goes well with this initial purchase, we'll start buying for all the units in each state."

"How many units are there?" Bob asked. He obviously wasn't familiar with the geography of South India.

"There are four overall. One here in Bangalore, one in Hyderabad, one in Vellore, and one in Thiruvananthapuram."

The long name certainly took most people off guard, and Bob was no exception.

"Thiru…what?"

"Thiruvanathapuram," Krishnan said again. "It's the capital of Kerala."

"And the other two?"

"Hyderabad is in Andhra Prasad, and Vellore is in Tamil Nadu."

"Is that the capital of Tamil Nadu?" Bob asked.

"No, it is not."

"Why not the capital of Tamil Nadu then?" Tom asked. He hoped that there weren't too many political complications in dealing with the 108th, but it wasn't looking good at the moment.

"There were some complications," the CM grimaced. "I'm not at liberty to say, but the CM of Tamil Nadu, Smt. Rajiswathi Iyengar, is, well, she has her own agenda. Let's just leave it at that, okay?"

"Of course," Tom replied. He wouldn't, and he was probably thinking about doing some more research into the matter.

"Vellore works out for us anyway, because it's our training facility," Colonel Krishnan said. "It's not as densely populated at Chennai, and they gave us some leeway when it came time to building our facilities there."

"Well, thanks for answering my questions," Bob said back, shutting off his iPad.

"Excuse me…"

It was the waiter again. Despite all the talking, everyone did have some time to look the menu over.

"I think we're ready to order," Colonel Krishnan said. "I'll have the Bamboo fried rice."

* * *

Prasad saw some suspicious looking men come into the restaurant. What was so suspicious of them, she couldn't tell, but they just didn't seem right. Instead of the upper-middle class/rich people who visited this restaurant, they looked very emasculated and underfed, as opposed to the pot bellies and curves that one might find in a restaurant of this caliber.

She looked at the bodyguard detail that was sitting by the door…and they were slumped over in their chairs. A quick look around saw that the waiter who had served them earlier was quickly walking away from bodyguard's table and passing by the group of suspicious men. The waiter then nodded to the men as he walked out the glass sliding doors.

"Iyer. Iyer!" Prasad hissed at her.

"What?" Iyer hissed back.

"The guards at the front!"

Iyer turned around in her chair and immediately saw the bodyguards slumped over and the suspicious men.

"Contact!" She reached in her purse and pulled out an MP5K and moved immediately to engage the men. Prasad did the same, drawing her Browning Hi-Power and focusing on the lead man who was approaching their area.

"Stop where you are!" Iyer screamed in English, aiming her weapon at the group of five or so men.

"Stop!" Prasad repeated, this time in Kannada.

The men hesitated; the element of surprise now gone, and with a variety of weapons pointed at them, they were in a bad spot.

"Everyone, clear out, now!" Iyer ordered.

The tables next to the assassins (as Prasad figured) quickly emptied out, with the men just standing there, wondering what the hell they were going to do. They could have taken a hostage, but that opportunity had been lost.

Not the sharpest tools in the drawer, Prasad thought to herself.

"Chief Minister, we need to move, NOW!" The remaining bodyguards immediately surrounded the CM and moved him toward the exit.

"We got the situation under control here, move!" Krishnan yelled to the bodyguards. Picking the CM up by the collar, the bodyguards hustled toward the exit. Krishnan was about to yell to them to use the rear exit, but they were already snaking their way through the restaurant and she didn't want to let the attackers know what was going down.

"You two," she said to Bob and Tom. "Stay. Down." They complied, hiding underneath the table.

"Put your hands on your head!" Iyer ordered to the men. They didn't comply.

"Do it!" Prasad hoped that they would give up, but they really seemed to be paralyzed.

"Got an extra weapon on you?" Krishnan asked to Iyer, walking up behind her. Iyer nodded, pointing down at her purse. Krishnan bent down and retrieved a P228; she chambered it and switched off the safety, pointing it at the suspicious men.

"Last chance!" Iyer said for the final time. "Drop the weapons or we will fire!"

Krishnan kept glancing at the entrance; the bodyguards seemed to have everything in good order. Someone at this point would have called the police, so everything seemed under…

BANG!

…control.

A small explosion emanated from the front of the restaurant, cracking some of the windows. At the same time, the men all pulled out a variety of pistols and firearms tucked in their clothing.

Iyer saw this, and depressed the trigger on her MP5K. A stream of 9mm bullets zipped out and made contact with two of the men; they went down with blossoming holes in their chests. At the same time, Prasad quickly double tapped another one; his head snapped back, a huge hole in the back of his head forming where his skull used to be. The other two men ducked behind some tabled and opened fire with their weapons, causing the three of them to duck.

"Iyer, cover me!" Prasad yelled over the din. "I'll head around and flank!"

"On it!" Iyer reloaded her weapon and snapped out from cover, laying down another couple of bursts from her submachine gun. Krishnan added her fire to the fray as well, although she was a bit rusty on the accuracy part.

Prasad leapt over a table and into a booth, then kept moving to the left while the two gunmen were occupied with Iyer and Krishnan.

It only took a few seconds to get to the left of them, but as she took up positions next to a table, she had a perfect shot.

"Drop it!" Prasad yelled. It might have seemed easier just to shoot them, but they had to at least try.

Of course, they tried to turn around to shoot her, which didn't exactly work. Prasad emptied the entire clip firing into them, with round after round pumping into their bodies. They slumped over, dead.

"Nice shooting," Iyer said, running up to the bodies and kicking the weapons away. "Here."

She tossed a spare magazine to Prasad, who ejected the empty one and reloaded.

"Iyer, Prasad, on me," Krishnan ordered. "Problem at the front door."

The sounds of gunfire echoed through the empty restaurant, and the screams of some people outside could be heard.

"Let's stop these bastards!" Iyer growled. She had enough of people trying to kill each other in public places. The three of them booked toward the gunfire.

Outside, the situation was bad. The CM's protection was under heavy fire from several masked gunmen behind dumpsters, parked cars and even a bicycle rack.

"Dammit, we can't get to the car!" one of bodyguards yelled out, ducking behind a table on the outdoor patio. He pointed to a Hindustan Ambassador parked just twenty meters away. The two men guarding it were dead, killed by a grenade that had been the source of the loud "bang" earlier.

"Major John, we have a situation here on Church Street," Krishnan yelled into her mobile.

"Can't here you," Major John replied. "Say again."

"Major, get the police here NOW and scramble a squad of troopers to Church Street!"

That time, the message got through.

"Okay, hold those guys off and try to get the CM out of there. We'll be there in as soon as we can."

Krishnan hung up and ducked a couple of bullets sent her way.

"Hold them off!" Iyer fired a burst from her weapon, downing a target in the distance.

"Dammit, there's too many of them!" Prasad yelled, shooting a couple of rounds at the masked attackers before being forced to duck again.

"We gotta get to the car!" Krishnan yelled at the bodyguards. She could see a small opening and a blind spot where the shooters couldn't see them.

"We can't! Too much fire!" one of them shouted back.

"There's a small opening down the patio," Krishnan argued. What kind of bodyguards were these? It seemed like they were deliberately trying to get their boss killed.

Perhaps that was the case, Krishnan darkly thought to herself.

* * *

The sounds of sirens in the distance cut through the gunfire and spooked the attackers. They immediately ran away down Church street, firing as they went. The bodyguards took the opportunity to make a break for it, followed closely by the three 108th members.

"Let's move!" Prasad and Iyer took up positions looking down the street where the attackers had fled; they couldn't see them now, but they were probably there, somewhere.

"Get in, get in!" The CM was unceremoniously shoved into the car, bumping his head against the roof. The car tires squealed as the bodyguard behind the wheel floored the accelerator and almost took out Col. Krishnan in the process, who had shoved the minister into the car. The car was joined by several police units coming down Church Street, and they in turn were escorted from the scene. In the meanwhile, two familiar Toyota Qualises came flying down the street and screeched to a halt in front of the restaurant.

"Go, go, go!" A squad of 108th troopers piled out, their M16s and MP5s at the ready.  
"They're down here!" Iyer yelled out. "This way!" She ejected her spent magazine and grabbed a fresh one from a trooper, and along with Prasad, the soldiers ran down Church street in pursuit of the assassins.

* * *

"Major John, thanks for coming and saving us," Krishnan said, looking at the squad search the area.

"Not a problem," John replied. "We came as fast as we could. Traffic was surprisingly light as well."

"Yeah, hmm." Krishnan was certainly proud of the 108th for having such a good response time as well as holding off the assassins. It wasn't ideal, but considering the circumstances.

"Oh dear."

"What is it?" John was pointing at Krishnan's sari; there were multiple bullet holes in the fabric, and it was stained with some food that had spilled during the battle.

"Hmm." That certainly wasn't good.

"I think I'll have to get that repaired," Krishnan said to John.

"It's such a nice sari too. Where did you get it?" John fiddled with the torn pallau, admiring its tarnished beauty.

"Some store near St. Mary's," Krishnan replied. "I don't remember which one though. It was run by a couple of Muslim guys. Nice people."

* * *

"It is safe now?" John and Krishnan turned to see the two men that had come with the CM were now standing on the patio, looking somewhat frightened.

"It's safe. We'll take you back to your hotel." Krishnan could not help but smirk at the two them, one of which had soiled himself during the battle.

"Dammit, this suit cost a lot," Bob griped, looking at the damage his bowels had done to his suit.

"You stink," Tom replied, giving him a look.

"Thanks for that."

Iyer and Prasad came running back, having searched the immediate area with the squad.

"Ma'am," Iyer said to Krishnan. "We did a search of the area, and came up with nothing. We'll continue with the search and…"

"That's quite alright," Krishnan said, raising her hand. "I need you and Prasad to take these two men back to their hotel and guard them until we can get some relief out for you."

"Which hotel are you two staying?" Iyer asked them.

"Uh, the Hotel Atria," Tom replied. "And thanks for the protection."

"No problem. Please follow me."

Major John handed Iyer the keys to one of the Qualises; they could all fit into one car, if they tried hard enough.

"What's that smell?" Prasad asked Iyer as they jumped into the car, with the two men in tow.

"I think one of them had an accident," Iyer replied, in Kannada. There were benefits of speaking multiple languages, and talking about someone right in front of their face was one of them.

"Hey, can we get a move on?" Bob asked. "I kinda need to change…"

Iyer smiled at him. "Of course." She stepped on the accelerator, and drove out of there.


	99. Omake: The doctor is in, Part III

**Omake Chapter: The doctor is in, Part III**

**0945hrs, 25 August 2012, "Top Secret" Medical Facility, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.**

_"As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body." Lewis Thomas._

* * *

"Ms. Kuroi, thank you for coming so quickly."

Dr. Kobayashi was settling in nicely at the "Top Secret" medical facility, and he had most of the staff positions filled. Everyone from nurses, orderlies, medical assistants…even some security personnel, although that would be up to another security company that would be coming in. He was surprised to hear that the Nakanishi Group's own in house security nor the government would be providing security, which made him wonder how much they valued the project. The security company would be hiring the people, but Kobayashi had to go through them and check them off. He wasn't too happy about that, since it involved more paperwork.

"Thank you for looking at my application, Doctor," Kuroi said back to him. She was in her late thirties, with nice black hair and a thin figure. Her CV was impressive, to say the least.

"I will say, I am quite impressed by your line of work," he said, looking over the sheet of paper in front of him. "What would you say was your most challenging experience?"

"Well, the tsunami, of course. I was working at the Tohoku University Hospital when the earthquake hit. We started to receive patients almost immediately; some were hit by falling debris, or were trapped under cars, suffered burns from fire, and the so on and so forth."

Dr. Kobayashi nodded. "Anything else?"

"Then the tsunami hit. Our hospital was fine, but we lost power, mobile connections, landlines, internet…it was very disturbing at least. We went for a week without rest, without adequate power, communications, or anything else that we needed in order to save patients. We had to turn away cancer patients because we had no medications to treat them with. We were reusing IV tubes, and needles…"

Dr. Kobayashi held up his hand. "That's quite alright . I'm sure that's one of the more difficult examples. There's no reason to continue on."

She nodded. "Thank you." The tsunami had changed everything, and she had left Sendai after about a year after it had happened. She just couldn't bear to live there anymore. It was time for a change in scenery, one that would have fewer memories of death and destruction.

Moving on, Dr. Kobayashi moved down the list to the "skills" section.

"So, I see here that you've also done Intraosseous infusion before," Dr. Kobayashi noted, looking at her CV. "That's a relatively new procedure, right?"

"Well, in comparison to IVs, yes."

"Hmm." He looked back down at the CV, and was about to continue on…

"Dr. Kobayashi!" An orderly burst into the room, out of breath. "Sir, there's a problem downstairs!"

He stood up from his chair behind the desk. "What is it?"

"There was an accident! One of the techs is bleeding out really badly!"

"We'll be right there." He turned to Kuroi. "Well, how about some hands on work?"

"I don't think I'm authorized to…"

"Come on," he said, putting on his white lab coat and walking for the door. "There's a life to save. We don't need paperwork to do that."

Nurse Kuroi agreed with that statement fully. "Fine. Let's go practice medicine."

* * *

The patient was in the basement, with a crowd of staffers and technicians surrounding the patient.

"Move out of the way!" Kobayashi yelled. The crowd parted, revealing a couple of people trying to stabilize the patient.

"What's going on?" Kobayashi asked to the people treating the patient.

"A piece of metal fell of some scaffolding and punctured the left subclavian artery," an EMT said to him, holding pressure over the wound on the left side of the patient. The gauze he was holding was completely stained in blood, and he added a couple layers of gauze onto it; any reduction of pressure would only result in the loss of more blood, which they certainly didn't need. The patient himself was slowly turning pale, and he was sluggish in his movement and speech.

"Blood pressure dropping, 80/60, heart rate, 50 bpm."

"Hey, hey!" the EMT snapped his fingers in front of the man. "Stay with me!" The man could only nod.

"He's lost lots of blood and we can't get a good IV in," another technician said to Kobayashi. There were some IVs nearby, and evidence on the right arm that they had tried to start an IV flow, but like he said, there was difficulty inserting the IV.

"Do we have any IO devices?" Kobayashi asked, looking at the patient continue to lose blood. It was bad.

"We just got these EZ-IO devices yesterday," a medical assistant said to him, pointing to a first aid kit that EMTs usually carried with them. "But we don't know how to use them."

"Well then, Nurse Kuroi?"

"You know how to use these?" the EMT holding the gauze on the patient asked her.

"Well…yes. Yes I do. Please assist me," she motioned to the MA that had been talking to them earlier. Putting her gloves on, she retrieved the EZ-IO device from the kit; it was a very small object, which fit easily into her hand. She attached a needle to the device, which looked like a small power drill.

"Please clean this area," she said to the MA, pointing to a spot on the right humerus. It would be unwise to try it on the left, and get in the way of the EMT who was holding pressure on the wound.

"Done."

"Please stand back." Nurse Kuroi aimed for the spot that the MA had cleaned, and after a couple of seconds, she inserted the needle.

Unlike IV infusion, IO infusion does not go to a vein; it goes directly to the bone. The needle drilled its way down until it hit the humerus, making a sickening noise as it did so. Once the needle had been inserted, Kuroi fitted a stabilizer and an adapter for fluids to be directly pumped into the patient. The fluid would go directly into the vascular system, preventing the patient from dying from blood loss.

It was a tense couple of minutes as fluid was squeezed from bags and into the patient; one of the EMTs kept a watch on the vitals.

"Blood pressure is stabilizing…100/60…heart rate…75 bpm. I think he's ready for transport!"

"Coming through!" A medical team immediately appeared, with a stretcher and all. That made Kuroi suspicious…where had all these people come from anyway?

"Who put in this IO?" one of them asked, lifting the man on the stretcher.

"I…I did," Kuroi replied, after some hesitation.

"Nice work. We'll take it from here." The left in a huff, wheeling the man to the elevator and for more advanced life care.

Kuroi was exhausted by the ordeal. She had come for a job, not to treat other people…but that was her job, what was she thinking?

Kobayashi came up behind her and clapped her on the shoulder, surprising her.

"I think you did good," he said, a sly smile on his face.

Everything went white.

* * *

Kuroi woke up in the basement, and a very scary, black lid was rising up above her.

"What…what was that?!" she exclaimed, as she was gingerly helped out of the…thing that she had been laying in just moments ago.

"There are our VR simulators," a man next to Kobayashi said.

"Nurse Kuroi, this is Dr. Kawasaki," Kobayashi said, gesturing to him after helping Kuroi out.

"Why did you do that to me?!" Kuroi asked, not exactly happy with being strapped into a big, scary machine like that. "How do I know you're real?"

Kobayashi moved to reassure her. "Nurse Kuroi, I know you must be confused. We've all had to undergo this sort of experience. Even me. I was the first one they tested the VR system on when I first took this job a month ago. I was exactly the same way, but these are some of the most advanced technology that we can provide in order for this program to succeed."

He smiled. "Now, how would you feel about a job?"

Nurse Kuroi immediately got the hint. "I…"

"There's no reason to rush," Dr. Kawasaki added. "You can think on this, if you want."

She shook her head. "Well, even though I don't approve of you drugging me, and I do remember the water bottle you gave me when you picked me up from the train station." She glared at the two doctors, who could do nothing else but shrug, "I will take this job. It seems that you have quite the operation here, and I'm willing to overlook your more…cowboy aspects of the job, if you let me do things my way."

That got the mostly taciturn Kobayashi to laugh. "Of course. We wouldn't have it any other way."

"Good."

"Well, now that's settled, I'll have Dr. Kawasaki here help you with the paperwork."

He gulped, mainly because the VR thing had been his idea. Everyone else had been more surprised than angry, but Kuroi was a special case.

"Ah...sure…of course," he stammered. "Right this way." He started to walk toward the exit.

Nurse Kuroi glared at him, but proceeded to follow.

Well, at least I have a job now, she thought to herself. Hope that I don't have to do anything else like that while I'm here.

* * *

"Dr. Kobayashi," a voice over the phone said. He was back up in his office after that entire ordeal, and the hiring section of the job was finally coming to a close. "How goes the hiring process?"

"We just hired our last applicant today, General Ishimura," he replied, looking over the data on his iPad. "A Yuki Kuroi. She wasn't very happy about being put in the VR trainers, that's for sure."

"I'm sure she wasn't," Ishimura said. "So, that concludes that section, huh?"

"It does. Now all that's left is to find volunteers for the program."

"That's the problem." Ishimura's voice got very serious all of a sudden. "We can't seem to find any volunteers right now."

"Really? I was certain that they would find someone too…"

Ishimura seemed hesitant to give out any more information. "Kobayashi, look. It's a bit more serious that you think."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The PM doesn't know about the program yet."

That actually didn't surprise Kobayashi; the PM didn't know about a lot of things, and this was no exception.

"Why doesn't he know?" Kobayashi asked, wondering why that was the case.

"We're still trying to find people, but they have to meet a certain criteria."

That did surprise him. "I haven't heard of any sort of criteria," he said, his eyes narrowing. He didn't like being kept out of the loop.

"Well…we're still trying to come up with the criteria, based on some other research, but I can give it to you right now, if you want."

"Sure."

"Ahem." There was some rustling of papers in the background, and then Ishimura came back on the line. "Um…we need people who are female or male, aged fourteen through eighteen, and…"

"What." Fourteen through eighteen?

"Yeah, that's what it says here."

"General." Kobayashi leaned forward on his desk. "What are you suggesting?"

"I'm not suggesting anything. That's what the criteria says."

"Who. Came. Up. With. This." Kobayashi growled into the phone, not exactly happy with this development.

"Look, that's above your pay grade."

"I have the highest security clearance known to mankind," Kobayashi snapped back. "There's nothing that's classified to me."

"With respect, Doctor," Ishimura retorted. The conversation was becoming more and more icy by the second. "You don't need to know who came up with it. They're long dead, and that's all I can tell you."

"Hmph. Well, good 'luck' finding people for that." What a joke, Kobayashi thought to himself. This program won't even get off of the ground, and we'll be closed up by next year. "And next time, please don't keep me out of the loop. I still don't know the specifics of the job, and I would like to be better informed before I start hiring lots of people."

"I'm sorry," Ishimura replied, his tone warming significantly. "It's just the way it is right now."

"Right." Kobayashi didn't say anything for a moment, pondering if he had any more questions.

"General, has there been any more development on the healing solution?" Kobayashi asked.

"Some. We're outsourcing right now to the Nakanishi Group to help speed it up and…"

"Why are we doing business with them?" Kobayashi interrupted.

"Because they gave us the best deal," was the response.

"Uh-huh."

"They did, and that's my statement," Ishimura said. "Did you have any other questions?"

"No. No I don't. Um…" Kobayashi didn't want to ask the next part, seeing that they had an argument.

Ishimura finished his sentence anyway. "We're still on for golf next Thursday. Despite our differences."

"Good."

"Take care." Ishimura hung up.

"Dammit." Kobayashi wanted to ponder over what had just happened, but there was simply no time. He had to look over the mission plan, and to get all these people ready, and…

Fourteen through eighteen. The criteria echoed through his head as he worked on some more paperwork. That's just messed up.


	100. Omake: Mr and Mrs Iyer

**Omake Chapter : Mr. and Mrs. Iyer.**

**0700hrs, 19 December 2013, Richmond Town, Bangalore, Karnataka, India**

_"We're so bound by customs and rituals. Somebody just has to press my button, this button marked tradition, and I start responding like a trained monkey." Sita, Fire._

* * *

Kavitha Iyer lived in the officers section of the Military Police training grounds. It was somewhat better than the barracks, but not really. The only thing that separated it from the enlisted quarters was that they got their own bathrooms and kitchenette for their own personal use. They could also have a family there automatically; enlisted members could also ask for residences for their families, but only if they were married (which wasn't the case all the time). It was a strange policy, recently written for the newly formed 108th SIDF, but that's the way things went.

"I'm home."

Mr. Iyer, with his shaved head and cleanly maintained face (which was also kept shaved, in accordance to religious tradition) was there, sitting on the couch , reading the _Deccan Herald_. He also worked for the government as an auditor, and while it didn't pay very good, there were…auxiliary ways of making income.

The first thing that came out of his mouth however, was not exactly what she was expecting.

"Kavitha, can you make the coffee, please? I don't like how Dewamma makes it, and she's been pretty busy as of late with all of the wives being gone."

_Let me get this straight_, she thought to herself_. I've been out fighting the bad guys for the last THREE days, with barely any time for sleep or rest, let alone eating anything that isn't out of a package or wrapped in plastic, and you want me to make YOU coffee while you've been sitting on you fat ass for the ENTIRE time that this conflict has been going on?!_

"Sure." Iyer, like a good housewife, obeyed her husband like he was her commanding officer.

"I heard from the news you had a tough time out there."

"Yes, it was very difficult," she said stoically back. Kavitha was in the process of grinding up the beans to put into a special metal filter, in which she would place chicory plus the newly ground coffee powder and pour hot water over it, letting it sit for six or so minutes. She would then add milk and sugar to offset the bitter taste. While counterintuitive to the normal Indian image of chai, coffee was just a popular as a drink, and just as creamy and sugary as chai.

"Coffee is ready." Homemaker or not, she had also made a cup for herself, god knows she needed it. Moving from the kitchen to the sofa, she gingerly balanced the two white cups in her hands and handed one off to her husband.

"Ah, thank you, chellum." That meant "dear one", but Kavitha couldn't really tell if it was sincere or not.

"Anything happen here while I was gone?" she asked her husband, sipping the coffee.

"The military police came by and told us to stay put in our homes. I tried to ask where you were, but they didn't really have much information on that."

"Ah."

She sipped her coffee, trying to let the tasty flavor soothe away the stress she had been experiencing these last couple of days. There had been shooting of course, but it was the waiting that was the worst part. Wait for orders, have people bug her for orders…then when the orders came, it was always confusing and hectic and…

"Kavitha."

Her husband's voice interrupted her thoughts.

"Yes, what is it?" she asked in English.  
"Tamil, please." Her husband frowned,

"Yes, what is it?" Kavitha repeated, wondering what had gotten him in a bad mood.

He sat there for a second, looking at her.

"I've heard some things."

_Okay, this is not going to end well._

"What things have you heard?"

"That you might be seeing another man."

"I don't have enough time to see you, let alone another man," Kavitha snapped back. She was not in the mood to have a fight with her husband, especially after what she had just been through.

"I work hard enough as it is," she continued, finishing off her cup of coffee in one big swallow.

"Look, that's what Dewamma told me, and I had to act. I cannot have anything happening to you, or any indiscretions on your part to jeopardize the family line."

"Of course," Kavitha growled back, walking to the kitchen and pouring herself another cup of coffee. "It's never your fault, but I have to be careful who I talk to and whatever."

"I am just worried…"

"Yes, thank you for your concern!" she interrupted, banging the coffee tumbler on the kitchen counter. "I faced death several times in the last couple of days while you're taking kickbacks from the SAME group that launched all these terrorist attacks against the world!"

The expression on his face changed immediately. "What are you…"

"Don't play around with me, _chellum,_" she spat back. "I'm a trained investigator. I know what goes on in government, and I don't think you would have been able to pay for that nice little sari you bought me last week on that puny little salary of yours."

Mr. Iyer narrowed his beady eyes at her. "That's completely different issue altogether."

"I don't see how."  
"I support us. Your salary doesn't even begin to cover the expenses!"

"Twenty thousand rupees is plenty enough," Iyer glared. That was a significant amount of money for someone in government, and one that while did not even begin to rival ones in the business world, was stable and could be counted on from month to month.

"And I make three times that amount, plus my bonus, plus grade pay." He folded his arms and looked smugly at her. "Despite what you might think, I don't take bribes."

Kavitha scoffed. "No, of course you don't. You take 'commissioning' fees. Or 'consulting' fees. Payment for 'services rendered'." Kavitha was on the hunt, and there wasn't anything that Mr. Iyer could keep from her. "All legal of course, but at the root of it, it's no better than the traffic officer who takes a 100 rupee note in exchange for not giving a ticket."

"That's ENOUGH!"

Mr. Iyer's roar silenced Kavitha's tirade.

"I will not sit here and listen to your insolence anymore. Answer the dammed question, are you seeing anyone else other than me!"  
"No, I am not!" Kavitha yelled back. "I don't have time for sleeping with any other men, like I said before."

Mr. Iyer looked Kavitha over again. He sighed, and then looked down at the ground.

"I'm sorry _chellum,"_ he said. "You were gone so much, and I was just worried."

That realization hit Kavitha like a sledgehammer. "Wait, so you mean to tell me that you were testing me?"

"I just had to know, again, the family name is at stake here, and…"

"I don't believe this." Kavitha stomped away from the kitchen and toward her room. "You can sleep on the fucking couch. Come back when you want to trust your own wife again."

With that, she slammed the door to the bedroom, leaving Mr. Iyer out in the kitchen, all alone.


	101. Omake Chapter: Disunity, Part II

**Omake Chapter: Disunity, Part II**

**1120hrs, 4 November 2013, Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan**

_"Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they'd be amateurs." Phillip Pullman._

_"The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more." Kin Hubbard_

* * *

It had certainly been a long day for Jadeite. Travelling from India, to China, to Taiwan, to Korea, all in one week was just exhausting. But all those flights had given him time to think. And there was something he needed to tell Beryl after all that thinking.

The shimming towers of the Nakanishi HQ in Tokyo were a welcome relief. It provided a breath of proverbial fresh air that he so desperately needed; it was his home, what he lived and breathed for, and for what he would probably die for.

Not that I need to worry about that now, he thought to himself as he stepped off onto the top floor, where Beryl's office was located. Mind you, she still wasn't actually in charge, but it didn't matter at this point. The CEO was completely coked out of his mind, and so guess who the business of running the company went to?

"Where's Beryl?" Jadeite asked the receptionist at the desk, who was at her computer.

"She's in a meeting with Mr. Yamada," she replied, barely looking up from her facebook page. "She'll be out in a couple minutes."

"Thanks."

Jadeite took a seat in a fancy egg chair, looking out over the Tokyo skyline. It was certainly beautiful, with the oncoming winter chill and the promise of snow in the forecast, it would be even better. He thought that it would probably be a good time to look over his notes in preparation for his proposal with Beryl. He took out his iPad and poked around with it, checking the notepad, and finally getting distracted by a game of _Angry Birds_.

"Mr. Jadeite." The receptionist's voice snapped him out of the game. He looked up and saw Beryl standing by the receptionist's desk, smiling at Mr. Yamada as he staggered his way toward the elevators, ready to blow the entire afternoon snorting mountains of cocaine.

"Beryl." He stood up and walked over to her, his heels clacking on the marble floor.

"Jadeite. Let's go to my office, shall we?"

She led the way to her office, which was located next to Yamada's spacious and decked out office. But since she was _de facto_ in charge of the corporation, her office was just as tricked out. The cherry-oak doors opened up to reveal a mahogany desk, several bookshelves in the same hardwood as the desk, and several more of those egg chairs scattered around the room. The impressive view of the Tokyo skyline was behind her, adding to the sense of power one got from this woman.

"I'm sorry about calling this meeting, but there's something that I need to discuss with you."

"Well, right to business now, aren't we? Let's get some tea first." She hit the intercom button on her desk. "Hanako, would you kindly bring us some tea? Thank you."

Within seconds, the receptionist barged in, with a tray of green tea and wagashi sweets for the two of them. She gingerly placed it on the desk and started to pour some for Beryl.

"That's okay Hanako, I'll do it. Thank you." The receptionist politely bowed and left, but before she did so, Beryl spoke up.

"Oh, um, I'm not going to be having any appointments for the rest of the day, and Mr. Yamada won't be in too, so why don't you take the rest of the day off?"

It was a nice gesture, mainly because she just didn't want to deal with other people in the office for a second. And the receptionist wasn't going to argue with her, so she left.

"So, now what did you want to discuss with me?" Beryl asked, pouring the tea out for Jadeite. She handed him the cup along with the saucer.

Jadeite took the cup, but did not take a sip until Beryl had filled her cup and started drinking. "Well, it concerns the SAILOR team."

"Mmm-hmm," she replied, putting the cup down. "What about them?"

"I worried."

"So am I. But I think they can be handled."

The nonchalance of Beryl made Jadeite a little bit worried. "Look, that may be so, but I was going to suggest an…insurance policy, so to speak."

Now that got Beryl interested. "What sort of insurance policy?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.

Jadeite steeled himself for what was to come. "If the SAILOR teams decides to have a change of heart, or finds out about our operations, or does anything to expose the nature of their operations, we need to have something on them that makes them look bad. As in, really, really bad."

"How bad is…'bad'?"

"I'm going to have to make a modification to that target list you gave the PM some time ago. I've been keeping up on the oil pipeline attacks in South Sudan as of late, and I think that it could be of use."

Beryl narrowed her eyes at the COO. "Jadeite, I don't know where this is going, but I don't think it will end well…" Her tone was icy, but she was just calculating the odds.

"Just bear with me, Beryl," Jadeite said. "I'll find some isolated village or something like that on the border with South Sudan/Sudan. I'll upload false target identifiers to the SAILOR team that will designate everyone as a hostile. They will respond with great effect, even if they're reluctant to carry out the act. We will then store this information and if things get out of hand, I'll start sending it out to powerful heads of state so that we can wash our hands of them."

Beryl and Jadeite looked at each for a second, unsure of what to say next.

"Problem," Beryl said, after awhile. "What if the SAILOR team doesn't comply?"

Jadeite didn't seem to be too concerned. "Even if some of the team doesn't go along with it, there are some more ax-crazy ones among them that'll carry out the mission."  
That wasn't cutting it for Beryl. "Jadeite, that's too much risk. There's too many factors here, beginning with the way the SAILOR team will react. If they're not going to cooperate with us in the first place, why would they read their target indicators on their HUDs as true, when they know they're giving out false information?"

"Look," Jadeite pleaded. "We need to plan for the long term. The SAILOR team is only good for maybe six months to a year. They can only do so much militarily, and especially after Operation TAKE HOLD. Security will be significantly tighter, and the chances of them wanting to leave or rebel will go up even higher after that."

"Might go higher," Beryl said. "It's not a guarantee."

"Neither is their cooperation. They're getting too smart for their own good. So, we can either take a chance, or we can play it safe. If they want to take us down, then they're going to have to go down as well."

Beryl leaned back in her chair. An insurance policy, hmm?

"Damn." She thought about it some more. It wasn't a great plan, but it was at least something…like one of those life insurance policies you got out of the vending machine at the airport and stuff. It was better than nothing at least.

"Okay," she said. It wasn't' the best course of action, but Jadeite had brought it up, and it was a good point nonetheless. "But you're going to do the setting up, alright?"

He nodded to her. "Certainly. I'll get some of my tech people on it, and then once they're on the mission, make the necessary adjustments."

"I'll call the PM once you're finished with the setup," Beryl said, "And have the SAILOR team sent to…wherever they're needed."

"South Sudan."

Beryl nodded. "Of course. We could always use more business in Africa."

"You sure about that?" Jadeite asked, skeptically. "I don't think there's much there…"

Beryl just glared at him. "Jadeite, there's a huge market in African nations right now. I know you're busy here in Asia, but I've got several contracts open with the governments of Kenya, Namibia, and South Africa at the moment, thanks to Kunzite, and we're slated for more business in Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritius and Botswana."

"After this entire business is over with, I'll be sending you to South Africa," she said, smugly.

Jadeite gulped. Was it a promotion or a punishment…?

"Oh no, it's not a punishment, you'll get your time in Europe or America," Beryl assured, taking another sip of tea. It had gotten slightly lukewarm, but no matter. She poured herself another cup (which was still hot), and took a sweet from the tray.

The look on Jadeite's face pretty much said it all. Instead of going to the more desirable places, he was going to yet another country that most Japanese people didn't know much about other than apartheid and Nelson Mandela.

But Beryl had an explanation on hand for his discomfort. She put her tea cup on the desk and folded her hands.

"Tell me Jadeite, why do you think I am sending you to all these different places?"

Jadeite looked down dejectedly. "Because I've failed the company in some way."

"Not at all."

He looked up in surprise.

"Then why?"

She smiled at him, her perfectly polished teeth glinting in the late morning light.

"You're young, and you need the experience. But, you're incredibly good at what you do, and you're going to be the next big star in this corporation."

That certainly reassured Jadeite, if only a little bit. "What about the others though?"

"What about them?" Beryl replied dismissively. "They're very comfortable in their positions now, but you're the trailblazer. They get to eat your dust while you're up ahead, clearing the path that all others will travel."

It seemed more like flattery than actual genuine praise, but being praised at all from Beryl was something heaven-sent, at least for Jadeite.

"I…thank you. I don't know what else to say," he said to her, taking a small sip of tea. It was cold, unfortunately.

"You don't have to," Beryl said, offering to pour some more tea in his cup. He obliged, and she poured some more into the cup.

"Now, getting back to business about the SAILOR team," she said, putting the teapot back down on the desk. "I'm sure that your plan will be sufficient. I'm putting it in your hands."

"Of course," Jadeite replied. "I won't let you down."

"I know you will. Now, I think that will conclude our little meeting today. I think I might finish up some work here and then get my nails done."

Jadeite nodded, and put his teacup on the desk. "Thank you for listening to my concerns today. I will make sure that everything goes off without a hitch."

Beryl simply nodded, and with that, Jadeite stood up, bowed deeply, and left the room, eager to get started on the "insurance policy".

Beryl watched him leave, then went back to her computer, but instead of actually doing any work, she decided that work could wait, and that some online shopping would be a great stress reliever.

"Mmm, these shoes certainly look very interesting…" she muttered to herself, clicking away at the images that flashed before her on the screen.


End file.
